Webinar Forrester Wave™: Data Management Platforms

1. WebinarForrester Wave™: Data Management Platforms Joanna O’Connell, Principal Analyst August 28, 2013. Call in at 12:55 p.m. Eastern time

2. Today, we’ll answer a few key questions • What is a DMP and why should I care? • Who are the key players in the DMP space and what are their strengths and weaknesses? • How should I think about choosing the right one for my organization?

3. What is a DMP and why should I care?

4. The always addressable customeris forcing marketersto change.

5. “Consumer behavior has changed, and we’re behind the curve” Source: September 26, 2012, “The Always Addressable Customer” Forrester report

6. This pool of connected consumers is already massive and still growing rapidly *Source: North American Technographics Online Benchmark Recontact Survey, Q3 2011 (US, Canada)**Source: North American Technographics Online Benchmark Survey (Part 2), Q3 2012 (US, Canada)

7. Audience-centric The traditional model of “media”-centric buying and communication is giving way to one driven by audience- or user-level decisions enabled by technologies like DSPs. Marketing communications must increasingly become: • Data-driven • Real-time technologies now help buyers and sellers make real-time buying and optimization decisions based on a wealth of data. • Multichannel • Consumers don’t think in channel silos, yet we continue to buy, communicate, optimize, and measure that way. The savviest marketers are working to transcend these barriers and understand the interplay among their marketing touchpoints.

8. It should not be about logos, but concepts Media management Audience management Holistic measurement

9. Marketing communications must increasingly become: A unified technology platform that intakes disparate first-, second-, and third-party data sets, provides normalization and segmentation on that data, and allows a user to push the resulting segmentation into live interactive channel environments 21% Source: July 25, 2011, “The DMP Is The Audience Intelligence Engine For Interactive Marketers” Forrester report

10. Data in, data manipulation, and data out • DMPs ingest and normalize a wide array of data streams. • DMPs provide tools to turn data into insights and targetable audiences. • DMPs create and maintain links to live channels for message delivery.

11. There are two key types of use cases we’re seeing

12. The Forrester Wave™: Data Management Platforms, Q3 2013

13. We evaluated seven companies with proprietary, standalone offerings and marketer experience

14. We scored them on 70 separate criteria

15. This was based on our assessment of what marketers need to know and look for in a DMP partner • Current offering • DMP deployment • Data collection and normalization • Third-party data integrations • Segmentation and user profile management • Scoring and modeling • Decisioning • Audience data syndication • Data ownership and security • Raw data access and portability • Reporting and analytics • Client service • Strategy • Corporate strategy • Product strategy • Pricing • Customer references • Market presence • Client base • Financials • International presence

16. This produced a market analysis that looks like this: a diverse range of strong options

17. Adobe ADOBE BRINGS A STRONG CURRENT OFFERING, A WELL-DEFINED STRATEGY, AND THE FORCE OF A MULTIBILLION DOLLAR COMPANY TO HELP DELIVER ON THAT STRATEGY • Adobe’s 2010 acquisition of standalone DMP technology Deemed gave it a foothold in the space, but the real Adobe Marketing Cloud story — of which AAM is described as a critical component — has only just begun to come to fruition. • Adobe’s significant investment in integration across its Marketing Cloud product suite over the past year is finally paying off, with DMP clients describing the seamlessness across several Adobe products — including its Analytics and Target products — as a major draw. With the additional acquisitions of buying platform Efficient Frontier, campaign management system Neolane, and tag management system Satellite, Adobe is well down the road in building out a marketing technology stack that broadly addresses data intelligence and audience delivery. • With its approach, however, comes some risk: As one client noted, “Adobe wants to be an end-to-end marketing firm, but it feels as if you run the risk of making the solution too generic where it ends up being nothing to anyone.” “What really set Adobe AudienceManager apart was the integration with Adobe Marketing Suite.”

18. X Plus One X PLUS ONE HAS FINALLY FOUND ITS NICHE IN THE DIGITAL MARKETING ECOSYSTEM • Its focus on predictive modeling, user-level decisioning, and delivering connected experiences increasingly addresses the challenges of today’s marketers. • Over the past few years, X Plus One has explicitly moved toward a more complete “digital marketing hub” model, which features a DSP, an on-site personalization engine, a tag management system, and a mobile platform among other tools. • X Plus One has proven itself up to the task of managing significant volumes of complex first-party data, with heavy representation from large financial services clients in its client roster. “X Plus One had the ability to do decisioning and optimization, had experience with first-party data in secure environments in the financial services sector, and seemed most able to help me realize my own road map.”

19. BlueKai BLUEKAI IS THE UNDISPUTED CHAMPION IN THIRD-PARTY DATA, WITH ITS BREADTH, DEPTH, SCALE, AND EXPERIENCE IN THAT SPACE • BlueKai offers to its clients instant access to hundreds of third-party data sources for a more centralized management of audience, insight generation, and targeting. Its early life as a data provider and, more recently, its massive data exchange business set it up nicely for a migration toward the DMP space, which began roughly two years ago with clients like HP as early adopters. • Since then, it has invested heavily in rounding out its DMP offerings, through acquisitions like analytics platform TrackSimple, and has focused on areas like first-party data management and mobile tracking and targeting (though, as one client noted, “I wish they did even more in mobile than they have.”). • Clients are attracted to its well-established position in the market and platform-neutral stance. In the long term, however, BlueKai may find it challenging to remain as a standalone platform as continued consolidation continues to pull such platforms into larger marketing technology stacks. “I felt that of all the different systems, BlueKai was most like the Switzerland of data. It could plug into most systems, which was really important.”

20. Aggregate Knowledge AGGREGATE KNOWLEDGE OFFERS STRONG MEDIA AND AUDIENCE ANALYTICS CHOPS, YEARS OF EXPERIENCE, AND HIGHLY RATED CUSTOMER SERVICE AND COMPANY LEADERSHIP • Aggregate Knowledge’s early life as an audience analytics platform proved challenging for the company in a market not yet ready for such a tool. However, as the market matures, Aggregate Knowledge’s focus on tightly weaving together media, audience analytics, and advanced attribution — bolstered by its 2013 acquisition of analytics tool Quantico — is proving to be a critical piece in clients’ media management strategy. • Its market-neutral position and extensive reach into the digital advertising ecosystem are also seen by clients as a valuable differentiator, with one financial services marketer noting: “When you want to understand the full scope of user behavior, you need someone who is deploying enough of their system cookies across the entire Web to have enough reach to follow them wherever they go. You can’t afford to engage with a DMP that doesn’t have a lot of users to engage with across the Web.” • As with BlueKai, however, we do not believe that its position as a neutral, standalone DMP is viable over the long term. “The leadership of Aggregate Knowledge [is] excellent . . . and it seemed ahead of the game by six months.”

21. CoreAudience COREAUDIENCE CAME ABOUT AS A RESULT OF THE 2010 ACQUISITION OF EARLY DMP PLAYER RED ARIL BY HEARST, BRINGING TOGETHER A GLOBAL MULTIBRAND MEDIA COMPANY, A DIGITAL AGENCY (ICROSSING), AND A DMP TO SERVE THE NEEDS OF BOTH • CoreAudience’s current offering is in many ways functionally similar to that of our Leaders, with its focus on real-time data ingestion, highly flexible segment building, and management. • Where it lags at this time is in experience; it has a smaller roster of live clients and fewer active channel deployments. This could change as clients of iCrossing look to the integration between the agency and CoreAudience as a clean solution to complex media and audience management challenges and as potential clients see value in CoreAudience’s access to Hearst’s significant store of proprietary user data. • CoreAudience’s “own your data” message has strongly resonated with clients. “We liked the idea of ‘own your audience’ and that this tool would help us take control of our data.”

22. Knotice KNOTICE’S EARLY FOCUS ON LINKING EMAIL, MOBILE, AND ON-SITE EXPERIENCES AND FIRST-PARTY DOMAIN ORIENTATION MAKE IT A SEEMING OUTLIER • However, its Universal Profile Management technology, released in 2008 with its explicit focus on the linking of anonymous and known profiles, has increasingly made it an attractive choice for audience management, primarily for small and midsize businesses. • Knotice currently lags behind other evaluated DMPs in its third-party footprint, with almost no external integrations in its wheelhouse today, though its road map shows this as a major focus going forward. • In the meantime, Knotice is increasingly seen by its savvier clients as more than just an ESP. “We would not have put Knotice in the DMP category before, but . . . I realized that we were not using it to its full potential. We have other divisions . . . that use five to six vendors to try to achieve the same thing.”

23. nPario NPARIO, A RELATIVE NEWCOMER, ROUNDS OUT OUR GROUP AS A STILL IMMATURE BUT PROMISING OPTION • Developed by Yahoo employees to serve that data-rich company’s own needs, nPario launched as its own entity in 2010, with its early client base consisting largely of publishers. One customer reference, now managing data initiatives at a global multiplatform media company, told us that he liked nPario so much at his last company, so he hired nPario for his new one. • Its highly scaled and flexible system for data ingestion and audience analytics and its smart, accessible leadership team are also attracting marketer clients to nPario. • To date, nPario has been focused more in data ingestion and analytics, with significantly less experience in audience data syndication than other vendors evaluated in this Forrester Wave. “It seemed as if this was a platform that could really support big data. We needed marketing intelligence.”

24. How should I think about choosing the right DMP for my organization?

25. Some key questions to ask yourself • What business challenge or challenges am I trying to solve? • Deriving audience insights? (And from what?) • Unifying the data collection process? (And from which sources?) • Operationalizing audience targeting? (And where?) • What tools are already in place at my company? • What needs do they meet? • What capability gaps do they leave that a DMP could fill? • How important are integrations between these tools and my DMP? • What characteristics are most important to me? • A strong, third-party data footprint • A “market-neutral” stance versus an integrated product suite • Vertical experience and experience • Strong consultative support • Mobile experience and capabilities

26. Use the customized weighting function to help identify the best options for your needs Note: This chart is for illustrative purposes only.

28. Joanna O’Connell +1 212.857.0718 joconnell@forrester.com Twitter: @joannaoconnell