David Rusli, chief strategy & data officer at Publicis Media Canada, describes new ways for marketers to define and activate audiences across digital platforms.
Data-driven marketing isn’t easy. While mastering Canada’s stringent privacy regulations, businesses must also function in an ecosystem where the majority of data is owned and controlled by platforms such as Google and Meta.
The lack of integration of data sources within this ecosystem makes it more difficult to track consumer behaviour. As does the erosion of third-party cookies, which is prompting marketers in Canada to invest in alternatives.
David Rusli, chief strategy & data officer at Publicis Media Canada, says: “As it stands, for every single ecosystem, planners, buyers, and clients have to create their desired activation audience five to seven times using different definitions. And that creates ineffectiveness as well as inefficiencies.”
To help marketers address this issue, Publicis Media Canada is launching two solutions – Publicis ID and Growth OS. Publicis says that Publicis ID, which aims to improve the performance of campaigns, is a cookie-less data solution designed exclusively for the Canadian market. Meanwhile, Growth OS is an end-to-end platform focused on reducing audience translation issues and inefficiencies arising from the current need to manage multiple media buying and planning tools.
A Canadian solution
But why the need for specific solutions for Canada? Canada’s stringent new privacy regulations, including the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, mean that securing access to some customer data is harder than in markets such as the US.
“We have to make sure our data solution is able to perform really well in Canada,” says Rusli. “For example, it’s very easy to get sales results down to the product level in the US. But in Canada, unless you’re a retailer, or a brand that has direct-to-consumer brand or activation, it’s very rare for you to get access to product data.”
In response to these challenges, Publicis Media has developed solutions that don’t rely on “buying in” lists of third-party information but enable brands to build data on audiences from the ground up.
For example, Publicis ID doesn’t store or process individual personal data such as names and email addresses but combines proprietary datasets with partnerships to create a unique audience data graph, reaching over 70% of Canadians.
Rusli says that early tests have delivered significant improvements in click-through-rates, video completion rates, and in extended reach for campaigns.
Making a creative impact
Marketers are also looking for improvements in the performance of creative assets. With this in mind, Publicis has sought to provide brand planners with the ability to access deeper insights on consumer behaviour rather than relying on research panels.
“Instead of just one big audience group, you can actually build a couple of different sub segments and kind of see if there is a certain insight and a certain behavior that each of these different sub group would exhibit,” says Rusli. “And therefore, the type of creative experiences you would create for the different sub groups. Then it’s not just one experience that you’re creating, you can actually get insights that are specific to the different sub segments.”
Publicis’ Growth OS product then streamlines reporting to provide data to creative teams throughout the campaign rather than when it’s finished. Marketers already have sophisticated dashboards in place to provide this analysis but Rusli argues that the difference is the single view across all platforms, simplifying the process of optimization: “When they exist in different places, then you can’t see the correlations as easily. When you have one home that you can use to pull in all these different audiences, and see all the results, it makes things easier.”
But it’s also vital that marketers focus on the needs of the consumer when investing in their data-driven strategy. This essentially requires an approach to personalization that delivers value for customers while safeguarding their privacy at all times.
Rusli concludes: “We’re actually able to create experiences that really matter to different consumers. Canadians are aware in terms of the type of access to their data that companies have. We’re doing it in a responsible way that will give consumers the benefit of more engaged experiences.”
Publicis Media is a member of the Institute of Canadian Agencies. Report on Marketing is where leading Canadian agencies showcase their insights, cutting-edge research and client successes. The Report on Marketing provides a valuable source of thought leadership for Canadian marketers to draw inspiration from. Find more articles like this at the Report on Marketing.
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