‘A fundamental failure of a national privacy law’: Acxiom CEO on what’s needed to get data back on track

By Michael Bürgi

Digital marketing and media finds itself at a crossroads: data, notably first-party data, has become more vital to any business than ever before, but privacy regulations are tightening to ensure consumers are protected, making data gathering just that much more difficult.

In the middle of this tug-of-war sits Acxiom, one of the largest warehouses of first-party and third-party data, which was acquired by agency holding company IPG back in 2018.

Digiday caught up with Acxiom CEO Chad Engelgau to discuss some of the challenges and opportunities the company faces. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Are there any large scale consumer-habit trends that stand out to you since the pandemic started?

It absolutely accelerated digital transformation for brands, meaning the ability to interact directly with a brand, who historically may have been very anonymous. Think quick serve restaurants as an example. People are more than happy now to not only lean in [and] order directly to expedite the process through the drive up window, or in-car delivery. And that’s given brands who historically were disintermediated at some level from their consumer because of the anonymity of it or cash payment — now, they’ve been able to embrace them and gather more data and insights, which is consent-based, and use that definitely to differentiate their customer experiences. They’re focused on their first-party data, they’re focused on personalization and solutions. That has been something where clients are leaning in much, much more and trying to get very specific about what their data-driven strategy is going forward, not only because of what they’re experiencing directly with consumers, but what they’re hearing about the ad-tech ecosystem between Apple, Google, and Facebook.

Detractors of mergers like IPG/Acxiom or Publicis/Epsilon love to say that cookie deprecation has rendered those deals much less valuable. How do you respond?

I would love to get on a public panel with any of those detractors because they are wrong. With the deprecation of third party cookie, I fundamentally believe that is a boon for us. Because the noise and issue that’s happening and the ad tech tax that exists isn’t based upon Acxiom, it’s based upon a whole bunch of middlemen exchanging inventory, exchanging cookies, trying to normalize mobile ad IDs — basically disintermediating the brand’s dollar and the media platform itself. This concept of our private marketplace that we will continue to expand, has zero dependency on the cookie. It’s about connecting all of the insights we have about our audiences, and people within advertising ecosystems, but [also] the media providers’ understanding of their audience, and the contact points … This actually positions companies like IPG and others in a much greater position. Because we manage the ad dollars, we own the demand, we are creating the direct path to the media providers, and the media providers want to work with people who own the demand. We’re in a fabulous position compared to the ecosystem in general.

It looks like we might see a more kind …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron