Happy to stick to the original media plans they have been using since day one, advertisers are unwilling to embrace new ways of doing things. In this byliner, Eyeota CEO Kevin Tan discusses how this inertia is holding back brands in Asia-Pacific from tapping third-party audience data.

When we first started Eyeota in 2010, programmatic buying of inventory was starting to take off, but there was a dire lack of third-party audience data. So, the company was born to fill this gap in the market. With additional funding from our recent Series A, which raised USD$7m (£4.85m), we will aim to continue providing high-quality audience data, with scale and reach across the globe.

Data is at the heart of our business and places us at the forefront of market trends in the digital advertising space, especially with the massive potential for audience data usage in Asia-Pacific and significant growth in demand of B2B data worldwide. As of January this year, we've seen a year-on-year increase in demand, as indicated by our growth rates in this region, where we grew 184% in Southeast Asia and 186% in the rest of Asia-Pacific markets.

Eyeota CEO Kevin Tan

Specifically, countries with the highest demand for B2B audience data include Australia, Singapore, UK, and US. I expect B2B advertisers to continue investing in B2B audience data for targeting online audiences.

Adoption of audience data, however, is not without its challenges. In Southeast Asia, the use of third-party audience data is nascent and key challenges hinder its growth.

One issue is that while brands are innovating all the time, their ad-buying strategies stay the same. They invest their ad budgets in print, TV, and OOH, but more should be funnelled towards digital, because advertisers should follow where their audiences are. Internet users in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia, are among the most active in the world, spending more than five hours each day surfing the web, according to GlobalWebIndex.

However, in terms of digital ad revenue, markets such as Singapore still lag behind many of their more developed, mature counterparts, because they continue to invest in traditional media even though audiences are online.

There is a general unwillingness to embrace new ways, and advertisers and media buyers are happy to stick with the original media plans they have been using since day one. The reason for this inertia is understandable. A MediaMath study revealed that 65.5% of nearly 3,000 marketers worldwide said third-party data licensing was not yet part of their data-driven marketing efforts.

This is unfortunate because there is so much potential that audience data can unlock. That said, though, most media planners in Asia-Pacific are caught in the middle. They may want to try a new media-buying strategy and shift more budget into digital advertising, or convince their clients to invest more in audience data for targeting their audiences effectively. However, they are unable to do so unless orders come from the top, either from the client-side or from their bosses.

Even the availability of global case studies, where audience data has been proven to help brands increase their ROI from their digital ad spend, can sometimes fail to convince buyers.

Top-down approach & buyer education essential

To drive the deployment of audience data, more in-depth case studies should be established to prove to buyers how tapping such data can play a part in targeting the right online audiences, so their ad spend does not go to waste.

These case studies need to be localised to win the trust of buyers. Industry bodies, such as the IAB, can play a part in spearheading such an approach, as they have begun to do so, and help simplify what audience data entails and how it can be used for targeting online audiences effectively.

For audience data usage to truly take off in Asia-Pacific, advertisers and media buyers also need to adopt a more experimental attitude towards usage.

The most innovative advertisers are open to testing audience data to identify the best data strategy for their campaign. A case study may provide a nudge in the right direction; but, ultimately, brands need to have a hands-on approach to figure out what works best for them.

Buyer education, hence, also is essential. In the early days of audience data in the US market, there were plenty of data vendors hawking low-quality, unrefined audience data, often obtained through dubious means. These black sheep have ruined the reputation of third-party audience data worldwide.

Data quality is important when it comes to using third-party audience data. For data vendors like Eyeota, this means trying to find as accurate a signal or piece of data as possible. Accuracy is critical throughout the data-collection process so marketers can assign the right information to the right individual. Sufficient accurate data and volume are essential also to an advertiser for targeting online ads effectively.

There is also a common industry myth that using first-party data will suffice. However, even a major publisher with plenty of registration data may still lack scale and reach. First-party data does not have enough scale and marketers have to perform lookalike modelling to obtain scale, resulting in the loss of data quality in the process.

The addition of high-quality third-party data allows marketers to achieve scale in their data.