Episode 31: Identity 2.0: Using First-Party Data in a Holistic Addressability Plan

Allyson Dietz:

Welcome back to No Hype. In just a moment we'll be diving into a feature session from Brave New Worlds 2024. Brave New Worlds is an exclusive marketing industry thought leadership and networking event for TransUnion clients. It's a real insider experience that puts senior leaders from agencies, brands, publishers and MarTech providers shoulder to shoulder to explore the challenges facing the marketing landscape today. In this episode, we're presenting one of the panel discussions from the 2024 Show – Identity 2.0: Using First-Party Data in a Holistic Addressability Plan. The panel included Richard Nunn, CEO of United Mileage Plus; Greg Johns EVP and Chief Product Officer of Canvas Worldwide; and Seema Patel, SVP of Data Enterprise TelevisaUnivision, and was moderated by Caitlin Borgman, Chief Commercial Officer at iD5. The future of addressable marketing has been in the industry news a lot, especially since Google made the decision to roll back cookie deprecation on Chrome. While this was recorded before that bombshell announcement, many of the discussion points you're about to hear –  from how marketers can offset the scale limitations of first-party data, to why commerce media is experiencing such massive growth – are still just as if not more relevant. Panel discussions like these are some of my favorite sessions at Brave New Worlds because they create conversations that can only happen when you get a group of very smart people together on stage. And after listening, I think you'll feel the same way. Please enjoy.

Caitlin Borgman:

So I am very excited to participate in this year's Brave New Worlds. And coming from a company that is specialized in building next-generation identity solutions for the online advertising ecosystem, I am particularly looking forward to moderating this next discussion with thought leaders who come from a diverse corner, diverse corners of the online advertising community. So with that, I would like to introduce Richard Nunn, CEO of Mileage Plus at United Airlines; Greg Johns EVP and Chief Product Officer at Canvas Worldwide; and Seema Patel, Senior Vice President Data Enterprises at TelevisaUnivision. So thank you. Alright, so very nice to have you all here. I think it's useful because we talk about first-party data and data in sort of this monolithic way, but to do a little context setting for this discussion. So I'd like to start with. help us understand what your responsibilities are as it relates to your organizations when it comes to data strategies, and then more specifically what first-party data means for your organizations. And Richard will invite you to start.

Richard Nunn:

Okay. Hi. So I've been at United for a year now, just over a year, and I'm sort of running the Mileage Plus program, so don't ask me about status, please. I did that yesterday, sorry. But it's actually broader than that. Obviously we have a very active Mileage Plus program, but it's about, we flew 165 million people last year and there's obviously a lot of data that sits under that across the whole airline. And there's three pillars on our side, which is operationally has to be a hundred-percent accurate with all the stuff that goes on with pre-, during- and post-travel; marketing, obviously in terms of us as a marketeer; and then the third pillar is the Mileage Plus program and all the commerciality of that. So it's currently in silos and how we look at that and Gareth was spot on, how we move that into the cloud and make it a 360-degree view of that individual.

Greg Johns:

At Canvas, I've been there since we opened the doors in 2016. So now on year nine, I think by my count. My org is really responsible for democratizing the use of data as much as possible throughout the organization. I started out as digital officer a couple of years ago. I switched that because I felt that we needed to adopt an ethos of looking at digital not as a channel, not as a thing that a certain team owns, but a way we all need to work regardless of the channel. So in my org, what I really try to do is look at data sources and make them as usable as possible for all of the different teams to do something with. We're never going to be able to do the things that Dr. Collins, for example, was able to do, if that is knowledge only housed in a data-centric org. It's got to be able to be pushed out to the people who can make the best use of it. So that's really what we're doing.

Seema Patel:

I've been at Televisa and for close to three years. We built up this data organization really from the ground up. It didn't exist before, and we build proprietary data assets and capabilities in service of various orgs within the company like ad sales, streaming and marketing. And really, we're charged with building these assets to help drive a more data-driven culture.

Caitlin Borgman:

I think one of the things I know, Seema, when we were talking in preparation, you pointed out the value that first-party data brings to consumers. And so this next sort of question I'm curious to hear from you as a publisher, and certainly Richard from a marketing perspective, marketer's perspective, how is your company investing in first-party data, and how do you see that in the inherent value that brings to your customers and your consumers?

Seema Patel:

Yeah, so we've got multiple touch points with our consumers. We've got a broad array of media assets across digital, social, streaming. We have local, we've broadcast, we have national and cable. We are the home of Liga MX and huge for sports. We've got concert tentpoles, we've got Latin Grammys, we've got all these touchpoints, and we really consider ourselves the home of Latin culture. And so a few years ago, we really set out to right-size the fact that today's media measurement routinely undercounts the Spanish-language consumer, causing a sharp misrepresentation. And just for context, this is a community that commands over $3 trillion of spend in the US, and is growing two and a half times faster than the non-Latino economy. A couple of reasons for that. There's population growth, there's faster educational attainment and there's higher participation in the labor force. And so this is a group that has significant power and contribution to our economy, but yet they're not accurately represented.

And the reason for that is because ethnicity is self-reported. And in the absence of asking, a lot of third- party data providers will infer. And that's generally based on geo and last name, which isn't necessarily terrible as long as you're right. And so on average there's about 59% coverage, which means that less than 6 out of 10 Spanish-language consumers are represented. And so we set out to build, since we're sitting on top of this rich data and all of these touchpoints across all of our assets, we set out to build our own household graph in partnership with TransUnion and Google and Truthset. And we're proud to say that we've got over 90% coverage. For context, there are about 18 million US Hispanic households and that is in service, as I mentioned before, of our internal organizations like ad sales, streaming and marketing.

Caitlin Borgman:

So the earlier presentation, our keynote, actually what you're talking about really, I think there's a lot of connective tissue there, right? Thematically wise.

Seema Patel:

Yeah, absolutely.

Caitlin Borgman:

Richard?

Richard Nunn:

We are moving into seeing data certainly a lot more strategically. There's a huge strategic pillar and a strategic advantage to us. I think before, like everyone here, everyone has a lot of data. We didn't really understand how we're looking at it. We have very soft qualitative measures like NPS, but it's qualitative, right? So we are moving now to a world of quantitative looking at LTVs against that data because of the scale. And to your point, the touchpoints that we have is pretty huge, but it's kind of threading the needle and then looking at what those kind of segments are and the values of those segments. So it is definitely a mindset change within the business for sure, but they're definitely investing in it heavily.

Caitlin Borgman:

That's interesting. Just a follow up on that, you're talking about lifetime value, which gets into ROI, right? And so there's inherent value of first-party data when it comes to the relationship with your customers. How do you look at and how do you recommend companies look at the ROI value of first- party data and what can you share, Richard, and I think Seema for you as well, perhaps.

Richard Nunn:

The CFO is my new friend. But it is, joking aside, important to again, strategically kind of frame to the business and to the board about the asset that we're sitting on, which is huge. And importantly then to translate that into what that means for business impact. And then from that, what investments we put ahead because we're in a business where, I don’t how many people are here, everyone flies. Yes, we have a massive loyalty program. It's one of the world's largest, but there's kind of the non-members who we don't really understand, but it's moving that into kind of a more predictive way through the value of data because we can work that out. And then putting dollars against it and then testing our way into it. And it's proving out to be successful. But yeah, putting it in a business context becomes very important.

Caitlin Borgman:

Got it. Seema, do you have anything to add?

Seema Patel:

Yeah, I mean, look, it does, it takes a significant amount of investment to build infrastructure, to have resources, to have the tech to build out a data asset. And it's really the ROI comes with usage. And so to your point about democratizing data, I'll share two examples and how we work with ad sales and streaming. With ad sales, we’ve built a bunch of connection points for our brand and agency partners to connect with our data and activate against it. So whether they're sending us seed segments and we're applying lookalike models and expansion against those to activate them against our activation platforms for campaigns, or if they want to send us their segments through vendor DMPs, we've built out those connections. Or if they want to share data and connect via clean rooms, we've facilitated that. And the ROI is really measured in the revenue that's generated for ad sales. That's how we measure ourselves. And then on the streaming side, we've built out assets to help in the areas. So we've got ViX, which is the largest Spanish language streaming app out there. We've actually built out a recommendation engine for that to help with customer engagement, retention, etc. We work with our lifecycle marketing team to help them identify folks who are likely to turn so that they can send them messaging or promo codes to extend their membership or just to keep them engaged. We also work with our subscriber acquisition team in terms of identifying potential subscribers or helping to keep them engaged with programming and content that they're interested in. And again, the ROI and the metric there is really TSH, or total streaming hours: how is the data helping to increase engagement to retain our customer interactions.

Caitlin Borgman:

Greg, I'm curious. Your perspective is also really interesting here considering you work with so many marketers that have different objectives. So anything to your perspective on how ROI is measured and how your clients are looking at ROI?

Greg Johns:

Yeah, I mean, as an agency we kind of sit in the middle of all of this. And there are plenty of agencies that have built their own first-party data assets. Many of them bought them, and I don't have the billion dollars to go do that. We focus instead on obviously what we call the first-party data that sits within our clients, so Hyundai Star, Zillow, etc. And the way we try to prove ROI for them in making the types of investments to make their data more actionable is through that incrementality that we can get from it in how we activate media versus other conventional means that they might have been used to for an automaker, for example, third-party data has been pretty reliable for a long time until signal loss has started to erode its power. We're only really starting to see first-party data become more prominent in the way we're thinking about going after customers. It's difficult for someone like a Hyundai to really leverage first-party data effectively in comparison to a lot of other marketers. Remember, they are in a sales cycle that is six, seven years. So you don't have a lot of velocity going into that first-party data that makes it as actionable as a marketer whose customer may be buying six, seven times a year.

Caitlin Borgman:

Got it. I'm going to switch and talk about, one of the things that I think is more broadly understood is first-party data is great if you have it. However, there are scale limitations with it. You have to have the marketing database itself, and then you have to have the audience itself to recognize to bring those two things together. So there is a lot of talk about how do you supplement first-party data in a world where signal losses and cookies are going away? Greg, what's your recommendation, and what do you see with your clients on how to supplement first-party data in the absence of more traditional identifiers?

Greg Johns:

I mean, sadly I've found there's no one size fits all. One of the things that is an inherent advantage to first-party data is you have the level of transparency of underlying attributes that you don't necessarily get in traditional data assets like a third party where I don't quite know what's in that segment. The reason that's important is that having the first-party data would allow you to make more intelligent matches for other data sources that, like Seema’s for example, you have more transparency into what attributes are there. And from our perspective, Seema, I would consider you second-party data, trusted partner data that has a level of transparency and predictability that we could then take advantage of to match to our own client's first-party data and gain scale. There's also traditional methods – lookalikes, that we often use in that regard – but there's dangers in doing that because at the same time, if you're doing a lookalike, say and TAP, you do have the ability to see what's in that underlying model and understand why it's working. If you're just doing it in a DSP by itself, the lookalikes run a little bit on autopilot. So they may work, but now you're in a condition of alchemy. It worked, but I don't quite know why and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to repeat it. So I think understanding how you can intelligently match those attributes is one of the keys to getting scale. You obviously have to be able to go find that data, have the mechanisms to transport it effectively, get the right matches, all the messiness that we're all dealing with right now.

Caitlin Borgman:

Richard, from a marketer's perspective, how do you as an organization think about supplementing first- party data in an environment where traditional identifiers are?

Richard Nunn:

Yeah, we're sort of stepping into this because actually we're in a very, and I wasn't fully aware of this myself and I joined the organization, but the value of airline-based data because of what you have to put in when you check in is very, very high fidelity. So our identity match rates are phenomenal. So that's sort of check in terms of the quality box. But what we're doing is kind of on an ad hoc basis based on, I think again, what we talked about earlier, the insights. There's obviously certain aspects that we have of our own customers. But where we see enrichment is the depth of insights that then can drive more personalization. But we're doing that on an ad hoc basis at this stage as we're leaning into it.

Caitlin Borgman:

Got it. How do you see alternative next-generation identifiers? This is a bit of a selfish question, but playing into extending first-party data reach, if you will, as well as supplementing other forms of targeting and measurement?

Richard Nunn:

I liked, again, what I think Gareth was saying. I think as an industry, we do overcomplicate things. God knows how many alternative IDs there are out there, and it does add a lot more complexity into the business. I think the end state is good, but it's the complexity that I don't think does itself justice to some degree and therefore, and also the question about what that point about incrementality, what the incremental value is about it. So I want to get there as an industry, but I think maybe controversially, there's just too many alternate IDs out there because which one is good, which one is not?

Greg Johns:

Said this to you yesterday, Caitlin, I think we all vastly underappreciate the fact that when digital marketing started now 30 years ago this year, standards were already in place and we have traded on the fact that the standards for the web existed forever and helped us get where we are. But in the big shift that's going on right now in how we target and how we measure, that's not the case. So that's why you see a hundred-plus identity graphs. It's why you have major players like a Google trying to write the standards because they want to essentially be that guiding principle for the web in the future. And that's complexity that, I mean, nobody has a clear path how we're overcoming that in the industry yet. I'd love to think there is a standards body that comes to bear and finds a clean way for us all to do it and maybe that that will be the case, but there's a lot more money at stake in 2024 than there was in ‘94, and it's going to be a problem.

Caitlin Borgman:

Seema, are you making any use of clean rooms? And if so, what are the results you've seen?

Seema Patel:

We are. So we have actually set up clean rooms with our agency and brand partners. It's a clean, privacy-safe way to share data, and to date the use case has been for campaign planning purposes. But we see this year in particular, we are starting to partner with retail media partners, and we see the usage of clean rooms increasing significantly within those partnerships.

Caitlin Borgman:

Richard, I think on the marketer and publisher, I feel like I talk to marketers and publishers, and clean rooms are all the rage in many ways.

Richard Nunn:

They are. And we've stood up three, as in three different technology partners. Listen, it is a hot topic. I think it's still very, very nascent across the industry from what we see. And ultimately you need two people to tango, and if you've got a contract with one and not the other, and you've got to kind of get into bed with the other, and I think…

Greg Johns:

And it’s a shame that you need three.

Richard Nunn:

Yeah. And again, the way I think we're seeing it, we've sort of dipped our toe. We've done, again, I think similar campaign planning insights and stuff on that front. But I think there's a leap. It's a new shiny tool. I don't think it's going to get scale because again, just quoting Gareth earlier, it's going to move into the cloud, and we are already positioning ourselves. And if you're in the cloud, and you've got multiple partners and there's only three of those major, major cloud players, then it becomes a lot more interoperable on that basis. So it's going to be interesting to see whether these clean rooms scale. There's a lot of noise, but I think we are seeing it quite hard to transact.

Seema Patel:

It comes down to the use cases that you're supporting and the process flows that are put around it.

Richard Nunn:

Yeah, agreed.

Caitlin Borgman:

Yeah, I've noticed, I feel like sometimes when I talk to clean rooms, it's like, oh, now you're a CDP or a DMP as well because you've had to go that direction. Is it a product, or is it a standalone thing? So it's more of a feature perhaps. I don't know, Greg, if you have anything to add to that?

Greg Johns:

I mean, I'm bullish on the underlying technology for it. I think it's something that is going to ultimately help us achieve more scale and transparency, and how data can move back and forth. I will be honest that from our perspective, one of the biggest enemies of clean rooms is still legal departments, and trying to get the understanding in there. Deploy is still too difficult when it comes to some of the partners that are out there. And I would kind of take the tact that I am not sure a clean room is a business. It's probably a feature at the end of the day.

Caitlin Borgman:

Seema, you mentioned retail media when you were talking about clean rooms. So another very, very hot topic these days. How has the rise in retail media and the retail media economy affected or impacted your business?

Seema Patel:

We see it as a huge opportunity, and it's a big area of focus for us this year, and it's a way to share our data, to share our inventory in some cases, to share our content with these partners. We're investing time and resources and building out the framework to engage. And in fact, earlier in March, Home Depot announced our partnership at their InFront, which is super exciting. So we have a lot of exciting work happening this summer, gearing up for the fall, and then we're actually in a couple of other conversations with some key partners. So it's definitely a big area of focus. It's again, for us, we see it as a new opportunity to share data, to share inventory, to share our content, and to really help our clients reach our consumers.

Caitlin Borgman:

Richard?

Richard Nunn:

Watch this space. But no, I think strategically, and it's not just retail, I think this kind of underlying point really, I guess is what we're here to talk about today, is it comes down to the value of first-party data and the accountability and attribution. That's why retail has done so well, retail, but guess what? We're in rideshares. We've just seen two major financial institutions get into it based on the value of their transactional data. So I think this whole sort of ecosystem and that huge shift of dollars, and it's billions, as we all know, everyone's seen the graphs – 165 billion I saw yesterday by 2025 – is because it drives accountability to the brand, right the way through to the end game. And I think if you can play in that world where you have very valuable, rich, quality first-party data that drives attribution, you're going to play that game all day long. So I don't think it's just retail. It's that whole value of that ecosystem. The value of first-party data that drives attribution. So I guess you must see, right, as the…

Greg Johns:

Well, yeah, I mean, truth be told, we don't engage heavily in retail media agencies just by the nature of our client makeup. But that said, I view it as a space to watch very closely, and I do. There's a saying about technology: having the technology first or building it first is not nearly as valuable as being the first to use it in a valuable way. So I look at the retail media space as kind of the experimental lab for everything that's going on with identity first-party data…high-velocity first-party data, for that matter. And it's going to be the area where I think we need to get some of our best learnings from and transform it into all aspects of how we're doing it, even outside of the retail space. It's the lab that I think we're going to learn a lot from and where a lot of failure is going to happen, but ultimately that failure translating to success, and the new world we're coming into.

Richard Nunn:

I think another interesting observation, having lived through the programmatic evolution, I don’t how many retail media networks there are now..120 odd, I think, last count or 180. Are they going to be 180 in two years time? Like ad network 2.0. It makes it very frictionless.

Caitlin Borgman:

How much of it is a reinvention? That occurs to me when I see a new company that I didn't think about, like a retail media network. I was talking to somebody the other day that was coining it “commerce media,” and not “retail media.” But that's the beauty of internet economy. It’s reinvention, and rebirth, and rebuilding. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this discussion and thank you all for listening in.

Allyson Dietz:

Once again, that was Caitlin Borgman, Richard Nunn, Greg Johns and Seema Patel at Brave New Worlds 2024. If you'd like to explore more of what Brave New Worlds has to offer, you can listen to all the sessions on demand at bravenewworlds.transunion.com. Thank you for listening.