Combine People, Process, and Technology for Advanced Advertising and Analytics

In many organizations, advertisers are caught up in the time-consuming chore of campaign management and rarely move beyond basic reporting. However, some advertisers are learning to automate their basic reporting by using technology and the human component to explore deeper, more advanced analytics insights. It all comes down to a focus on people, process, and the role of technology.

Focus on People
What many companies need to realize is that a focus on people means breaking down the silos that often exist within organizations — silos that frequently result in teams competing against and restricting data from one another. Very few organizations mandate analysts and advertisers working together, but some of the most successful advertisers are those who have chosen to proactively break down those walls.

The idea is to create an advertiser-analyst hybrid that automates basic reporting to focus on advanced analytics insights.

Let People Drive the Process
It’s easy to become bogged down in the process of basic analytics, focusing on things like run rates, pacing, trends, deltas, and basic totals. These are the chores of campaign management that often turn people into report robots or analytics monkeys.

A deeper focus on people, however, should also drive a different way of looking at the process. An important step toward making the process more people-centered is to foster curiosity within your company culture. Organizations need to make it safe for people to take risks so they can go in and look at things in ways they’ve never looked at them before.

Advertisers should be able to go beyond marketing-channel reports into a structure in which details about customers can be compiled.

Use Technology to Amplify the Human Component
Advertisers and analysts should be irreplaceable because they do the work of interpreting data and developing courses of action based on that data in ways that a machine cannot. Technology is important, but it should be used to free up the advertiser-analyst hybrid to do the work of advanced analytics.

With basic analytics, everything is paired in volume and efficiency. The problem is that there are too many case studies that say things like, “Oh, we tripled our row ads, or cut our cost per action (CPA) to a third” without any perspective on what the volume was associated with that efficiency.

The reality is that averages lie. Advertisers focus on conversions, but few focus on non-converting costs or ignored impressions. Just look in your account at the campaign or ad — across search, display, and social — that has the most impressions with zero engagement after it. The idea is to look at your conversion funnel, filter for zero, and look at the next best thing.

When you do this, you’re shifting away from products; applying an attitude of segmentation to ads, keywords, and campaigns; and trying to find the balance between volume and efficiency. A helpful way to think of this is to apply the parietal principle, or the 80/20 rule, in which a minority of objects are impacting the majority of your activity.

Many organizations are beginning to utilize an integration of Adobe Analytics and Adobe Media Optimizer to automate much of their basic reporting so they can free up time and attention to focus on advanced analytics. What’s important is that a company’s advertising team and analytics team feel like they’re speaking the same language — whether they’re using native integrations or an open architecture.

A Combination of People, Process, and Technology
We’ve seen that a combination of people, process, and technology leads to deeper analytics insights. By moving beyond basic analytics, advertisers are better able to understand their customers and make better marketing decisions in light of the data.

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from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/analytics/combine-people-process-technology-advanced-advertising-analytics/