Signature Tricks and Habits of a DMP Guru

A Day in the Life of a DMP ( data management platform) Guru

Adobe consultants are super technical, quirky, and crazy-interesting human beings. I want to take a stab at extracting things they have locked up in their brains from working day in and day out to meet our customers’ needs. This series explores the typical daily habits, best practices, and signature tricks of an Adobe Audience Manager guru.

Nina Jacobson, Adobe Senior Consultant, has worked the ad tech game for five years. Each morning, her day begins with a hike through busy Times Square—not an easy jaunt. Nina looks for every opportunity to embellish her lunch with a slice or two of avocado. When asked how she manages to juggle avocados through the morning rush, she quickly points out that she was once a tennis instructor. I guess it takes stamina, which is also an important ingredient in the world of digital marketing.

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Nina hiking the Acropolis in Athens.

Which types of customers do you work with?

FSI (financial services industry), M&E (media & entertainment), agencies

Do you work with publishers, advertisers, agencies, or all?

All!

Describe your typical day as a DMP guru.

Make my way through all of the tourists to get into the Adobe Times Square office, make some coffee, read through all client emails that have come in overnight. Get on the phone with clients to touch base on current implementation tasks. Meet internally with product and consulting for new-feature training. Meet with new clients to plan their implementation kickoffs.

What are some of the challenges customers have faced with implementing a DMP?

Because DMPs are fairly new in the ad tech space, allocating the appropriate internal resources to a project can be difficult. A DMP is best implemented by a dedicated team member who can interface with internal tech and marketing partners.

What are some best practices you recommend based on your experience?

Make sure to review your data on a quarterly basis! The DMP is only as good as the data it ingests; make sure you aren’t missing any impressions served or analytic data points.

What do you recommend as success metrics for a customer with a DMP?

For publishers, selling against more RFPs (requests for proposals) with the ability to segment audiences. For advertisers, an increase in conversion rates based on more-accurate audience targeting (though this is also dependent on working with the targeting platform).

What are your top three signature Audience Manager tips or tricks?

1. Review your data on a quarterly basis: Has your analytics implementation changed? Are you tagging all media plans?
2. Maximize your existing business partnerships by adding a data exchange—a second-party data relationship—to the mix.
3. During implementation, identify a full-time resource to lead the project and manage audience segmentation on an ongoing basis.

What is your favorite new use case?

Second-party data is my favorite new use case, especially after speaking about this topic at Summit. While this use case can seem daunting at first, a great way to get started is to think about existing partners that you work with to see if you can add a data exchange to your relationship.

In your opinion, why is a DMP important to the business you work with?

A DMP is vital to create integrated audience segments. This is the best platform to mix and match different data sources (onsite analytics, media impressions, third-party data, customer resource management) to get a full 360-degree view of your customer and then give that customer the best messaging at the right time.