Dive Brief:
- Google, Facebook and Amazon all have their own gigantic repository of data on individuals and according to Marketing Land, brands are now joining forces in cooperatives to share data in order to compete with the industry giants.
- One example of this data sharing in action is Audiences by Skimlinks, a data co-op created by U.K.-based affiliate network Skimlinks that pools anonymized customer behavior data from its group including publishers and retailers.
- The data is valuable because it allows for targeted and personalized marketing and advertising campaigns.
Dive Insight:
Data is the lifeblood of digital marketing.
Even though marketers have access to second- and third-party data sources, shared data among brands has more value because it is essentially a pool of first-party data much larger than any single brand could collect on its own. The data co-ops include a wide range of publishers and retailers offering greater insight into consumer behavior for members. It also allows participating marketers to find and target look-alike prospects within the shared data pool that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to reach with that level of precision.
Of course while data is a powerful component of digital marketing, it comes with its own set of challenges. Victoria Godfrey, CMO at Avention, recently told Marketing Dive, “Marketers recognize the value of data-driven insights. But when faced with the number, diversity and sheer amount of data sources – plus uncertainty about how to translate data into business benefits – they often succumb to data paralysis."