This year’s RampUp brought together some of the industry’s leading experts in adtech, brand marketing and data analysis. Each session provided invaluable insight to how both B2B and B2C companies are leveraging data to bring more sophisticated marketing to their customer base. Many of the sessions resonated deeply with Vistar Media’s approach to data and measurement for digital out-of-home and mobile media. Since returning from the conference, Vistar attendees Eugenie Chen, Director of Analytics, and Laura Kasakoff, Data Partnerships Senior Manager, collected their key takeaways from RampUp 2019, shared below:  

• "Three Flavors of Identity Solutions"
  
  This session included leaders from Acxiom, Adobe, BlueConic, Disney and LiveRamp to discuss IdentityLink as well as how their brands measure success. During the discussion, it was a clear consensus among the panelists that, “[t]here's no better insights than your first party data for measurement," as summarized by Chad Englegau, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer at Acxiom. Elaborating further, Amit Ahuja, Vice President at Adobe Systems said, "We all need to do a better job to put consumers first; we need to be more clear to consumers on what we’re doing,” – connecting to the recurring theme of customer centricity and data transparency that was discussed throughout the summit. At last year’s RampUp, outdoor retailer REI invited Vistar to share how the partnership between Vistar and LiveRamp enabled REI to leverage their first-party audience segment for identity-safe, anonymized targeting. As brands, like Disney, begin to embrace a data-driven approach that connects consumers across multiple touch points, targeting strategies will continue to improve.

• “The Other ABM: Account-Based Measurement”
  
  While B2B has typically been behind the curve with digital adoption, programmatic offers a more scalable approach with advanced targeting. The panelists – executives from Dun & Bradstreet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and T-Mobile – each touched on the value they attribute to DOOH. Effective channels for B2B require “...data to stitch the customer journey and measuring at every step of the B2B customer journey is important,” according to Anudit Vikram, SVP at Dun & Bradstreet. Gavin Warrener, Director, B2B Digital Marketing and Demand Generation at T-Mobile recommended that brands “...[t]ry to be as programmatic as possible. Try to be more aggressive with an OOH ad running outside of HQ, an airport campaign,” and so on, in order to reach these specific audience segments. Fortunately, Vistar has the ability to align with B2B brands’ ABM goals by connecting marketing strategies with B2B data and executing programmatic campaigns.
  
  
• The Drum: “What’s next for data-driven marketers? Avoid being ‘brand regressive’”
  
  If you’re looking for a full recap of the two-day conference, The Drum has shared highlights from both days of the summit. Of note, LiveRamp CEO Scott Howe made several major predictions, including that programmatic will experience considerable growth and B2B will be the “next big thing” in data for targeting, measurement and strategy. So keeping all of this in mind – what’s next? We all know that the U.S. has an incredible pool of available data, but as Steven Wolfe Pereira, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer of Quantcast warned, “...not all data is created equal.” Ultimately, the challenge marketers will face will be ensuring that the right data is applied for the right activations, in the right place, at the right time.  

Interested in learning how Vistar leverages data for programmatic digital out-of-home and mobile media?