Dive Brief:
- Nielsen launched Nielsen Marketing Cloud, a cloud-based digital marketing platform that includes a data management platform (DMP), data-as-a-service business, an attribution system that uses the DMP, and an analytics tool, according to Ad Exchanger.
- The cloud platform combines technology assets that Nielsen both developed in-house and brought in through acquisition like eXelate.
- An unknown number of companies from industries including food and beverage, personal care, wine and spirits and digital media are currently testing the cloud platform.
Dive Insight:
Data is the focus of Nielsen's latest product. Although Nielsen is calling the new product a "marketing cloud," the nomenclature is a bit misleading: Nielsen's platform is only focused on data whereas most other marketing cloud offerings include a range of martech such as marketing automation, email automation and CRM software.
“Exelate sits at the core of this,” Megan Clarken, president of product leadership, Nielsen, told Ad Exchanger. “We’re taking a piece of technology infrastructure and building a really big data engine. On top of that, we’ve done some of our own bespoke software development and made [other] acquisitions to support it.”
Data is playing an increasingly important role in digital marketing, with increasingly robust capabilities to track and measure campaigns available to marketers. But just because data is important doesn't mean marketers know how to use it. As Marketing Dive reported recently, big data is not a substitute for big ideas — but it should inform them.
“Our data is created from scratch – the most obvious one being media exposure data," Clarken said. "Will we ever get into CRM or email? I have no idea, because there are terrific datasets out there we can use without going down that route.”