text: Last month Wayne Blodwell, Head of Programmatic at iProspect UK, put together this article on Data Management Platforms. Our friends at The Drum published the piece, which you can check out below.
  If 2014 was the year of programmatic then 2015 is the year of data management platforms (DMPs). At iProspect we define programmatic as ‘using data and technology to drive marketing performance’ which by design makes data management platforms hugely influential within anything programmatic.
  At their core, DMPs allow you to bring in data from your website, your customer database (including offline data), your data deals with partners and/or more general third-party data marketplaces to create a single-customer view which can then be segmented in a structured way (a taxonomy).
  These audiences can then be set up to be targeted within buying platforms such as display, video, mobile, search, digital out-of-home and social. They can also allow you help plan non-connected mediums such as print, linear TV and traditional outdoor. Once you have done this, you are able to overlay a creative messaging plan to each audience thus maximising impact and performance.
  The above is one paragraph on a page but that is a LOT going on and that can be overwhelming for advertisers. There are serious considerations around time, resource (across non-marketing teams) and cost before even approaching a DMP project.
  The best way to approach a DMP project is for advertisers to answer the below three questions:
  (1) What are your business goals for one year, two years and five years?
  (2) What does your marketing plan currently look like to help achieve those goals?
  (3) What data are you currently generating and/or storing?
  Once an advertiser has an understanding of the answers to these three questions they can then work with experts to draw up the appropriate business case and project roadmaps.
  In many cases there is no need for advertisers to go ‘enterprise’ with DMP technology; there are often other solutions which will fulfil the business requirements with less resource, time and cost commitments. Of course, on the flip side of this, if advertisers do not invest heavily enough into a DMP they can quickly realise the limitations with some ‘off-the-shelf’ solutions.
  Before advertisers go ahead and start implementing a DMP they need to sit down and think how they will actually utilise it. DMPs have the potential to give your business a hugely competitive edge in increasingly competitive verticals but if over-invested in they can end up being a massive cost on your marketing P&L.