When exploring new 3rd party data sets through the Audience Marketplace in AAM, a recommended first step for AAM Customers is to enable data feeds for Segments & Overlap. This step allows users to explore data by building segments to evaluate scale and running overlap reports to gain initial audience insights, all within the walls of the AAM platform. We ask all of our data providers to make this use case available at no cost as a way to prove the value of the 3rd party data sets, and help close the sale. For more information, please refer to Feed Setup and Promotion FAQ.
Occasionally customers will run overlap reports and have questions about the results. How should they interpret the overlap reports after they run? What is a “good” overlap? What does it mean if there is a low overlap? Below are best practices and key points to keep in mind when reviewing the results of overlap reports with these customers.
- Ensure that the two data sets are apples-to-apples as far as type of data and collection methodologies:
- Geography
- Cookie vs. Mobile IDs [For Cookies, important to understand implementation and frequency of ID syncs]
- Lookback window
- Offline vs. Online
- Frequency of data refresh by the data provider
- Overlap can grow slightly overtime, so make sure that the appropriate amount of time has passed before running overlap reports to allow for the data to sync. This could take up to 30 days.
- There is no guarantee that there will be an overlap between data sets. For there to be recognized overlap, a user from the customer’s data set must be associated with the data provider data set during that time frame. I.e. If the customer’s media data didn’t get served to the users in the data provider data set, there will never be an overlap.
- Overlap could increase if you use data from that data provider in more marketing campaigns and initiatives. This allows for more opportunities for users from the two data sets to sync.
- Ensure that sync pixels with data providers are deployed in customers’ AAM containers, as that will help data providers increase their chance to identify/sync their users in AAM. This may slow down the page load but will support a higher overlap as otherwise overlaps are depending on only running syncs through other customers’ properties.
- Low overlap is not necessarily a bad thing. A low overlap may enable the opportunity to prospect and engage new users.
Additional resources:
https://adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/match-rates-just-number/