New Dimensions in Data: Key Insights from Beet Retreat Berkshires 2024

The Beet Retreats are some of the highest-profile events on the marketing calendar, bringing together high-level executives and thought leaders to explore the future of media, connected TV, addressability and more.

This summer at the Beet Retreat Berkshires, the TransUnion team had a front-row seat to some of the most impactful discussions and insightful conversations. Here’s what we learned:

The cookie is back on the menu… or is it?

During Beet Retreat, Google announced it was leaving behind plans to deprecate the third-party cookie on Chrome, seemingly putting an end to years of uncertainty about the future of targeting and measurement in addressable advertising.

And while this may seem like monumental news, the reality is the cookie was never an ideal solution for addressable marketing — and is likely to only become less relevant as time goes by.

The biggest reason for this is privacy. By their nature, third-party cookies can track users’ online behaviors without their explicit consent, raising serious concerns about online privacy. Moreover, with laws like GDPR and the CCPA substantially strengthening privacy protections, savvy marketers have already moved on to alternate sources of data that are more privacy conscious and less likely to run afoul of regulators.

But it’s not just about changing regulations and consumer expectations of privacy — the media landscape itself isn’t as dependent on the cookie as it once was. Many of today’s fastest-growing connected media channels, such as CTV and digital audio, never relied on cookies in the first place. Additionally, the rapid proliferation of streaming options for consumers has led to increased fragmentation for marketers, forcing them to look to solutions that connect and translate across all ID types to create robust views of their target audiences.

In an interview with Beet.TV at the Retreat, TransUnion VP of Strategy for the Media & Entertainment vertical Kevin Kowalick summed it up like this:

“Even as cookies do continue to exist, the amount of different publisher and platform IDs are in a place where to grow or maintain a view of a customer, you need to connect and translate across every kind of ID.”

The third-party cookie may be sticking around, but the cat is out of the proverbial bag; many connected media marketers have already turned to configurable, interoperable solutions built with the future of privacy in mind.

TV measurement is entering a new golden age

Between the Paris Summer Olympics and a major election in the US, 2024 is going to be a huge year in TV spending. And following industry trends, an increasingly large slice of that pie will be going to CTV. In fact, according to eMarketer, fully one-third of all spend in the converged TV marketplace will be going to CTV in 2024.

With more attention on the CTV space than ever before, calls for resolving the historic measurement challenges in the heavily fragmented streaming video ecosystem are growing in volume.

But much like finding the right audience, building an effective measurement strategy means tailoring your approach to your business's needs, rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all solution.

Fine-tuning a measurement strategy that fits the oft-scattershot media consumption habits of today’s streaming video audience really comes down to identity. With a holistic view of consumer behavior across the funnel, marketers can use identity as the core connective tissue of their campaigns from planning all the way through measurement, ensuring they’re getting more accurate and actionable insights into real campaign performance.

Data-driven marketing is more than a numbers game

In a macroeconomic environment where budgets are tightening and marketers are being asked to do more with less, it might seem like taking a singular focus on the easily quantifiable — boiling down audiences to data points and lists of brand interactions — is the right approach.

However, this can create a situation where marketers miss the forest for the trees and lose sight of the real people that make up their audiences. Data in a vacuum can misrepresent a user’s true intentions or only show a small slice of their full media interactions.

“It sounds straightforward, but many times the technology obscures what marketers really should be focused on,” stated Brad Danaher, Vice President of Advanced TV at TransUnion, in an interview with Beet.TV. “It’s really identifying who’s right for them, which channels are best for them — it takes a lot of nuance and understanding beyond just digital identifiers.”

Instead, marketers should look to holistic, people-based identity solutions that give them the power to connect all the disparate signals present in the marketplace today — both online and offline. By starting from that fuller picture, marketers can better ensure they’re delivering messages that are more likely to resonate in the channels their target audiences prefer.

The retail media network renaissance is here

Retail media was a frequent topic of discussion at Beet Retreat Berkshires this year, and for good reason: According to eMarketer, by 2027, one out of every five CTV ad dollars will be retail media.

It’s not hard to see why. CTV and retail media are an ideal match. Viewers are spending more time watching CTV than linear and are generally more engaged while doing so, giving marketers more bang for their marketing bucks compared to other channels. Additionally, CTV’s digital nature means retail marketers have access to the precise targeting and measurement needed to make the most of their high-quality retail data, better ensuring viewers receive relevant marketing messages while limiting waste.

This combination of quality data and a rapidly growing channel affords marketers the best of both worlds when it comes to reach and accuracy. The marriage of first-party data and highly engaging video content offsets each side’s inherent drawbacks. Given that, expect to see ties between CTV and retail media only strengthen in coming months.

Forging ahead

If the conversations at Beet Retreat Berkshires were any sign, the pace of change in the marketing industry isn’t slowing down any time soon.

But for savvy marketers, change can be an opportunity to drive more positive results, deliver more cohesive consumer experiences, and develop a better understanding of who their customers truly are.

To learn more about how to make the most of today’s marketing environment and stay ahead of the curve, visit https://www.transunion.com/solution/truaudience.

The opinions present in this piece are derived from interviews with TransUnion attendees at Beet Retreat and are not necessarily representative of the perspective of Beet.TV.