Two experts weigh in on the importance of data for 2014

"Expect marketers to take more control of their data management infrastructure through trusted partnerships and draw clear boundaries and manage risk in a complicated ecosystem," said Andrew Bloom, SVP of Strategic Business Development, DG. "Targeting across screens is the new black - expect to see more comfort around programmatic (RTB) and [a new focus on] dynamic targeting and messaging across screens. In particular, expect to see more interest in sequencing of messages across screens, as the consumer becomes more and more nomadic, more irritated than ever about a bad user experience and more demanding about the value exchange between free content and targeted advertising."

Bloom also expects to see growth in open platforms as brands look to solve the problem of the increasingly fragmented online space.

Meanwhile, MediaMath COO Ari Buchalter believes ad modeling will have a great impact on 2014. Ad modeling helps brands better predict customer behaviors; modeling, Ari believes, will improve in 2014, giving brands even more controls.

"We're going to see an increase in the power of models leveraging big data. The signal-to-noise ratio will improve as data quantity and quality grows, and models will become better at de-averaging aggregate consumer populations...to resolve important differences among target populations with unprecedented accuracy," said Buchalter.

Buchalter also believes that while data collection and analysis will remain on top of brands' must-haves, data activation will become a great compliment to those features.

"Whether in-store, online, over the phone, etc., the ability to extract from massive data stores the exact relevant and actionable details that will enhance a single customer interaction - and help deliver the desired outcome - will become a differentiating capability. That will involve not just the data itself, but technological infrastructure as well as business processes built around data to enable its extraction, delivery, and packaging, just in time," said Buchalter.

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Tags: advertising data, data analysis, DG, MediaMath, online advertising