The future of data-driven marketing: Reflections on the 2022 AMI WA Marketing Summit

In September 2022, I had the privilege of representing Gatecrasher and Loudmouse Digital at the Australian Marketing Institute's Western Australian Marketing Summit, held at the luxurious Crown Perth Ballroom.

It was a full-on day, but it was a great way to learn more about data in marketing. The areas the Summit touched on included:

The conference had a fantastic line-up of speakers, including marketers working in agencies as well as client side.

I went into this conference not knowing much about data, so here's a few things I learned. The first thing was the different types of data marketers can collect and use.

Types of data

There are three types of data marketers use. All three types are beneficial in different circumstances; however, first party data is most often the preferred type as it's the most reliable.

First party data

First party data is any data you or your company has collected directly from your audience. This often includes:

Second party data

Second party data is data that you haven't directly collected yourself but has been shared with you by another party.

It is essentially the first party data of another company who has agreed to share it with you (when it's mutually beneficial to share, and of course when they have permission to do so!).

Third party data

Third party data is data gathered by external companies who collect and analyse datasets, then sell it to companies to use.

This data isn't as reliable as it comes from broad sources, rather than from people in your specific audience.

Another downside is that if you can buy it, so can your competition.

Cookies

The next focus of the day was on cookies (not Cookie Monster's favourite snack).

What are cookies?

Cookies are small files that are created when you visit a website. They are saved in your browser and collect a range of time-stamped information, such as the products you're interested in, login details, and settings you've changed.

There are two types of cookies: first party and third party.

First party cookies

First party cookies are cookies created directly by the websites you visit, They allow the website to collect analytics data, remember settings, and enhance the user experience of your visit to the site.

Third party cookies

Third party cookies are created by websites external to the one you've visited (i.e., third party).

For example, when a website loads the tracking code of an advertising or social media company, a third party cookie will be created to record user interests, browsing habits, products viewed, and other information which helps with ad serving and retargeting.

Third party cookies will begin to be phased out in 2024.

What does the phasing out of third party cookies mean for marketing?

In short, it means that any marketers relying on third party cookies to get information about users will need to find alternative ways to collect their own data and better target their ads. This means shifting to a focus on first party data collection methods.

Key takeaways from AMI Summit speakers

I learned so much from each speaker on how data is used in campaigns, however two topics stood out.

Chris Paterniti, Senior Account Manager at Dilate Digital, talked about how to utilise Spotify ads in marketing strategies.

Spotify ads have the unique ability to contextually target people. This means they analyse users' listening habits, and play ads related to those activities. The platform also analyses favourite music genres and playlists to gather possible interests.

The disadvantage of using Spotify ads in your strategy is that listeners will only hear the ads if they have the free version of Spotify.

Elizabeth Lefort, Chief Marketing Officer at HIF (Health Insurance of Australia) spoke about the 70%, 20%, 10% rule.

This rule relates to the way marketing campaigns are set up and organised.

• 70% is the amount of your campaign that is what you know works with your audience. This information is gathered from campaign data to help identify areas of strengths.
• 20% is making optimisations to what you know works, to see further improvements.
• 10% is pure innovation - trying, testing, and seeing what the outcomes of different strategies, channels and tactics do for your business.

This rule relies on the collection of data to find out exactly what's working and what's not, to find new audiences, and to make strategic optimisations.

With the 10% however, data is analysed after the campaign to work out what innovations worked or didn't, to then make changes to future strategies.

Data-driven marketing in action: Spotify Wrapped

A few speakers talked about Spotify Wrapped. This is a campaign that goes live at the end of each year and is a great example of first party data collection in action.

Spotify Wrapped is a personalised collection of shareable stories showing each user their year on the platform. This data is cleverly designed to make it appealing to share and fun to look through.

Spotify Wrapped includes:

• Showing the number of minutes of content, they've listened to
• Their top 100 played songs
• Favourite podcasts
• Most listened-to artists
• Top genres

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And the list goes on.

Take me for example. I love seeing my year in review and adding my personalised top 100 songs of that year playlist to my library.

It's a great way to look back over the years and see what music I loved listening to at that time in my life. As you can see, I have Wrapped playlists dating back to 2017.

These playlists create nostalgia and an auditory record of users' favourite songs throughout the years.

My top 100 song playlists from 2017

What the future of marketing looks like

The day finished with a look forward to what marketers will be doing post-cookies and predicting future marketing trends.

The consensus was that the phasing out of third-party cookies is a good, albeit challenging, task for marketers to face.

The benefits of post-cookie marketing strategies are:

Future marketing trends to consider

The final session of the day was focused on looking at future trends in marketing.

CEO of Marketforce, Adam Marshall, gave his predictions for the top 3 forces shaping marketing in 10 years' time, and they were:

1. Streaming platforms
2. The Metaverse
3. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Recent data suggests that by 2030:

It wasn't a surprise that The Metaverse and AI topped predicted trends, given advancements in tech, as more people are wanting to close the gap between the real world and virtual spaces.

I was a bit surprised to see the streaming prediction. But, after hearing why, it made sense.

Streaming platforms are major players in consumer mindsets. It's estimated that many households have at least four different subscriptions; many have more.

In the coming months, many streaming services will be introducing ads to their platforms. This gives marketers an opportunity to reach more of their audience, and target their audience contextually, like Spotify can.

For example, showing food-based product advertisements when people are watching cooking shows. This seems like a smart match-up as people are thinking about food at that moment and are more likely to engage.

Overall, it was an insightful day and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to every speaker.