5 Questions Every DSP Needs to Ask Before Sourcing Contact Data

Social media, display, email—effective advertising today means reaching your audience across channels in a coordinated, smart approach for an omnichannel experience. But dealing with individual ad managers (like Facebook or Google Ads) can be complicated at best. That’s why it’s no surprise Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) are gaining traction with marketers for their ability to purchase, manage and track the outcomes of online advertising for multiple channels all in one place. Businesses running campaigns on multiple platforms can greatly benefit from using a DSP—but many of them haven’t done so yet. The opportunity for DSPs to reach businesses, especially small businesses, and convert new customers is high. The challenge is reaching the right audiences by using the right data.

There are many factors for DSPs to consider when sourcing contact data. To start, there are a massive number of data suppliers in the market today and ever-growing data privacy regulations that must be met. DSPs need data that meets their requirements for fueling targeted, omnichannel campaigns (including online and offline contact information, as well as firmographic data). And of course, there are the matters of accuracy and reach.

When it comes to finding the best audience segments to meet your expectations, here are 5 things all DSPs need to know about contact data and the right questions to guide the process.

1. Quality: Does the data reach the intended contact?

Quality contact data is the cornerstone of effective campaigns. When your data is fresh and accurate, you can reach prospects at the right time, with the right message. Each record of contact data represents a real person -- and like people, data changes. In fact, it’s estimated that B2B data decays up to 70% per year as people move, change companies or get promoted, purchase new devices, start new accounts or switch email providers, among other things.

When looking for a data provider, DSPs need to ensure data starts clean and accurate, and stays that way through routine data cleansing. Look for a quality-focused data provider that understands how data changes and works to keep data healthy, ideally with an email data validity guarantee of 95% or higher for the first 30 days. At OMI we view data as a “Living File^® that needs to be regularly maintained and updated to accurately reflect the contact person it represents.

2. Privacy: Is the data secure?

With increasing concerns of customer data privacy, it’s imperative that DSPs take every step possible to ensure data is responsibly secured. Data marketplaces offer an innovative approach by sourcing data from multiple providers in one place. The data can be downloaded separately, or used in an identity graph, a collection of known customer or prospect identifiers pulled from data sourced from the providers participating in the identity graph. The customer/prospect identifiers can include names, phone numbers, home addresses, personal and business email addresses, usernames, etc. But the data is anonymized to alleviate privacy concerns and can be taken straight to the DSP for implementing display advertising campaigns. OMI’s B2B and SMB contact databases along with a specialty vertical medical database are available on the LiveRamp data marketplace, offering access to over 75 million quality decision-makers.

3. Reach: How many contacts are available?

Reaching more people is a better strategy in the early campaign stages. While more targeted, refined audiences based on previous learnings will drive better results in later campaign stages. Intuitively, this makes sense.

The days of “spray and pray” marketing are long gone, but the more people you target at first, the more interest you can gain. Your percentage of responses may be lower, but a low percentage from a large audience can be better than a high percentage from a low audience number.

DSPs need a third-party provider that can offer the volume to reach both the right people and enough people. OMI has more than 80 million B2B contacts with email addresses from 18+ million companies, and one of the largest SMB databases of more than 60 million SMB contacts. DSPs looking to target new audiences won’t come up empty using OMI’s database.

4. Match Rate: How well can the data be applied on an identity graph?

If you do decide to go through a data marketplace, it’s important to ask about the match rate for the data provider and the graph. An identity graph match rate shows the contact match from a data provider (like OMI) to the graph—contact to contact—for an overall match. It indicates the percentage of users that an identity graph is able to find in a set of data, letting you know how big of a pool you can draw from when building your audience. At OMI, 94% of our B2B contact data is matched to a LiveRamp digital ID, providing DSPs with unparalleled display advertising reach and accuracy.

5. Does the data give a complete view of the prospect?

Effective campaigns need complete data so campaigns are firing on all channels, reaching the right prospects at the right time. Pulling together online and offline data sets, an identity graph gives a full picture of the customer/prospect by drawing from a vast collection of data in a single place. And most data marketplaces, like LiveRamp, have high standards for the quality of data they offer. DSPs need to consider the breadth and depth of data for a full picture of the prospects that are being targeted.

Digital B2B marketing has been reimagined, with new data options for you to build your desired B2B audience. But omnichannel outreach will only be as effective as the data, so it’s important to ensure you’re sourcing contact data from a quality vendor. OMI has deep experience in the data needed to drive digital marketing and programmatic campaigns.

Data marketplaces like LiveRamp offer an efficient and effective approach, with quality data available in a single place. OMI data segments are available now in the LiveRamp marketplace and OMI is here to assist in the process. OMI has data scientists on staff to guide marketers in their data selection process -- our hands-on customer service focus sets us apart from the other large data providers.

OMI has 75 million of our 80 million manager-level and above contacts matched to the LiveRamp ID graph, including 65 million records from our SMB and medical market databases. Contact us today to learn more about building a custom audience.