Tinder for the digital branch – dmexco is hot and digital

Tinder for the digital branch – dmexco is hot and digital

Berlin, Sep 20, 2016, by Nicole Blumberg

“Tinder is how people meet”. That statement also applies to the dmexco. Well, at least partially. Unlike Tinder the crème de la crème of the digital branch meets at the dmexco: marketing authorities, chairmen & Co. The appearance, the presentation of the stand and the (famous or not) name decide who matches who, but the claim “Pure Business” already implies that partnerships in general are desired. The whole matching-process happens offline here, without a direct locality search or like-limit. Our CCO Lars Urban and Marketing Manager Nicole Blumberg were part of the conference. What did we learn for our creative and development team? Nicole has the answers.

The motto of the dmexco this year “Digital is everything … not every thing is digital” has already been analysed and interpreted by many branch experts. How do you interpret it?

I definitely agree with the motto. Digitalization exists in the public discourse since about 20 years now and it seems like the gap between digital illiterates and data collection machines widens from year to year. I don’t think time will show when everything digitalizes - to me this is more a matter of willingness. The transformation process of old business models is accelerated by disruptive innovations, but only because there is so much possible technologically speaking it doesn’t mean that the user wouldn’t consciously prefer the analogue world. Omni-channel is cool but only with offline alternatives please! The digital exhibition dmexco ironically had bits of paper everywhere. Most visitors printed their tickets (honestly we did, too) to get access to the digital exhibition. While paying for food and drinks we asked ourselves why mobile payment start-ups didn’t offer their products directly. This shows that even THE digital exhibition isn’t fully digitalized yet, too.

One of the most crucial topics this year: Multi-channel-tracking and cross-device usage. Which incentives did the dmexco provide on this subject?

Channel tracking is already splendidly constructed. Ranging from dwell time to heat-maps analyses useful information can be obtained from tracking. Unfortunately, the average multi-screen or cross-device user exacerbates the tracking analysis of marketers because of his partially parallel use. The combination of deterministic data and probabilistic algorithms emerging out of the basis of the user data obtained from social logins and forms etc. to draw conclusions about the online user behaviour will probably offer the biggest chance to success. In spite of the plethora of data which users are already willing to reveal so far brand performances are rather poor – Once looked for some shoes online, these would follow you to every page you visit afterwards. To reconcile the user with this topic again, the customer journey needs to be optimized thoroughly. At dmexco there were plenty of providers who specialized their business to that area and developed different solutions. Whether these solutions will stand future tests and make the desired success remains to be seen. For now let’s listen to David Shing, Digital Prophet at AOL, who says that brands and campaigns should rather be replaced by stories to create relevance in an increasingly fragmented world.

Big data was the topic of many talks at the dmexco. Global players like SAP, IBM & Co. were also present at dmexco, dealing with topics like programmatic advertising and automation. Do you think the importance ascribed to big data is justified? What can we learn from that topic?

Definitely. User Data is like the wind in the wind mill! Search engine with the biggest market share: Google. Favourite social media platform: Facebook. Favourite shopping platform in Germany: Amazon … Notwithstanding that all of these big players were present at dmexco, they have another thing in common: True to the motto “Big Brother is watching you” all of them collect data. How could you possibly evade that topic? The amount of parameters which eventually reach until the conversation itself increase with every new device and channel you use. Big players are not the only ones who are well aware of that fact. Nowadays brands have to put their message in the right place at the right time with a great story which is emotionally moving and has obvious added value. User needs developed and so does technology.

Buzzwords like artificial intelligence, profiling and customization describe processes which optimize the customer experience and simplify the data analysis. 95% of all user decisions are based on emotions. Machines cannot provide that aspect. Consequently this human component comes behind the machine, which thus concentrates on the evaluation of the information provided. When the world around you is too confusing due to all the buzzwords floating around, it is wise to listen to what the user actually wants: human intelligence.

The challenge is not only to find out a way to gather most user data but to efficiently use these insights for a better product design and customer approach. The market is pretty much used to generate data but using these data “big” – so to take a bigger profit from them – remains to be the actual challenge.