Leverage Labs – Future-proofing your news website 

John Haake – Customer Data Platforms can form deeper audience relationships

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Quintype and Leverage labs
Chirdeep Shetty, chief executive officer, Quintype, and John Haake, vice president Sales and Marketing, Leverage Labs

Quintype and Leverage Labs organized a webinar on 30 September 2021, John Haake, vice president, sales and marketing at Leverage Labs, characterized Customer Data Platforms (CDP) as the next-generation buildings on the foundations of Data Management Platforms (DMP). “While DMP has a focus on paid media, in CDP publishers can form a deeper relationship with users by taking the information they already have, the first-party data collected around behaviour, and do personalization for the most relevant information.”

Customer Data Platforms (CDP) utilize all data, including first-party data, whereas Data Management Platforms (DMP) typically focus on third-party data. DMPs are explicitly developed for advertisers and agencies to enhance ad targeting. CDPs are focused on all marketing elements, whereas DMPs are built expressly for advertisers and agencies to improve ad targeting. 

DMPs by themselves will not provide a long-term competitive advantage since their goal is to assist marketers selling digital advertising, although over time with more anonymous data, the targeting becomes more accurate. CDPs make it easy for DMPs to integrate first-party data to improve ad targeting, and a DMP enriches CDP data for better customer communication.

Leverage Labs distinguishes CDP and DMP

While DMPs have been around for about 15 years with wide adoption on publishing websites, there is a tremendous amount of overlap with CMPs. DMPs allow publishers to collect and segment high-value audiences by transacting on cookies. DMP uses cookies as first party and third party, but the audiences aren’t known. DMPs don’t have known user profiles, and that’s where a CDP comes in. 

Market forces bring new trends and opportunities – 

  • Privacy – The first paradigm shift is with Opt-in vs Opt-out as it puts the consumer in charge of audience tracking.
  • Data blindspots – The behemoths like Facebook, Amazon, Whatsapp, Google, and LinkedIn claim a massive amount of the money spend, creating a data blind spot for the customer.
  • Diminished Scale – Current data on-boarding relies heavily on synching cookies or consumer-centric ID points viz., PII including personal eMail addresses. IDs are challenging to match in the Business to the Business domain, while personal eMail is relevant and easy to match.
  • Third-party cookies and IDFA – The demise of third-party audience tracking. The addressable audience shrinks in scale, and CPM’s plummet on open exchanges as behavioural data becomes scarce.

Publishers see news consumption on social media, and they all publish their news there. While social media is weaponized with information, the audience only engages with sites that are viable for them. Hence, publishers need engaging content to retain audiences.

Haake said Leverage Labs is working with publishers to understand exactly what they intend to use their first-party data to drive. Many decisions made at the time of implementation have significant ramifications down the road, thus addressing these use cases earlier allows setting up the CDP environment to drive those cases efficiently. CDP’s are marketer’s tools for audience building. Even as an organization aligns to use the new technology, it takes time to get revenue. His company gives training using case studies and sales sheets – it believes that with the right training, income can accrue after six months.

Publishers move towards reader revenue

As a publisher, there is a robust market of solutions out there. CDP’s that concentrate on the data pipes moving are the oldest type out there. CDP’s that do jobs like tagging all the assets and opportunities that the audience will interact with, do a better than the average job, and are able to collect data.

It’s simple to know whether a visitor is a subscriber and this is very valuable information regarding first-time visits – if it’s a new or returning visitor who hasn’t chosen to subscribe. CDPs can start delivering specific experiences to encourage them along a user journey that converts into a subscription. The publisher can pull the trigger on a more extended subscription for the marginal or sporadic visitor. 

So, the more you know about your audience, the better you can tailor the offering. Being able to segment the audience between existing subscribers or returning visitors who are not, publishers have to be ready with multiple plans and customized experiences designed for specific types of users. The CDP understands audience motivation and this leads to better conversion rates. 

2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India

Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.

The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry. While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.

The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.

Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.

Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.

Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.

– Naresh Khanna

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