Advertising thrives on tech. It wouldn’t be advertising if there wasn't a healthy line of new technology entering the market and transforming the way the industry works. By now, we’ve all accepted that data, in particular, is imperative to successful campaigns; but there’s a new concept on the scene – bid enrichment. And it’s something we should all start getting excited about. As Colin Grieves, managing director, digital marketing & media services, Experian writes for ExchangeWire, bid enrichment has momentous potential, enabling a huge shift in brands’ ability to effectively, efficiently, and accurately interact with their customers.

Many brands are now successfully leveraging multiple data types to improve relationships with their audience, whether that be loyal customers or target prospects. Fashion retailer Otto, for example, is using data to better serve their customers by pulling 200 variables, such as brand, price, and weather, to forecast expected sales, minimising the chance of disgruntled consumers missing out.

So, data is clearly a very valuable tool; but it’s crucial not to get carried away, and ensure you’re always working with the right data. With the rise of programmatically driven advertising campaigns, there’s no excuse not to have the correct data handling processes in place. Modern advertising and digital marketing starts with data, so make sure that data is in a fit state to be used.

Cleaning up your data

As well as having the right data, you also need the right technology and the right processes in place. The challenge isn’t gaining access to these tools, there are plenty out there, but, rather, overcoming the hurdle of scaling data that is often fragmented. Specifically, data used for display advertising activity is often not linked to other marketing activities.

This will seem a familiar situation to seasoned advertising professionals. The environment we’re working with now is a highly fragmented one, with multiple players competing for a small share of a large and lucrative market. Using data effectively is definitely achievable, and should be something all advertisers and marketers strive for, but it requires investment in terms of time, and a significant level of expertise to ensure effective connectivity and integrations happen smoothly.

By nature and need, buyers want to be smart. However, a fragmented environment means that data is not always where it is needed. Enter bid enrichment – the answer for ensuring that data is accessible, scalable, and accurate.

This represents a new way of introducing valuable data into the programmatic ecosystem, at scale, and in real time. Bid enrichment works by receiving live bid requests for advertising inventory and selling the same ad opportunity back to the market once it’s been enriched with clean, high quality third-party data: a process that happens in less than 150ms, thousands of times per second. For media buyers this brings a huge benefit – the ability to provide consumers with more meaningful and relevant messaging through quality data.

Such data is already been used extensively by thousands of brands in both traditional channels and newer digital channels, such as social media. Audience segmentation tools, such as Mosaic, have established themselves as the standard data currency for organisations. It helps brands and advertisers build up an accurate and actionable understanding of their customers to help bring the two parties together and continue making meaningful engagements.

Access to insight at scale

Bid enrichment is a no brainer for advertisers. It gives brands that all-important access to insight at scale, and in real time. This provides the goods, which is crucial for their success – greater familiarity with individuals and better alignment of messaging to consumers across a number of channels. For the always-on, modern cross-device consumer, it’s not enough to have relevant engagement on just one channel or device – it needs to be consistent throughout their entire journey.

Bid enrichment allows marketers to target the right audiences and link those same audiences to wider marketing channels, including email, social and addressable television. It means big things for both the bidding ecosystem and for marketing as a whole. The industry is in a powerful position to be the most accurate it ever has been, and, importantly, it offers the potential to radically improve marketing performance in the future. Something anyone in the advertising and marketing industry should be excited about.