Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to another episode of Screen Bites, our thought leader series where we learn from industry experts about the latest trends and challenges from across the conversion TV space. 0:09 I'm your host, Michael Beach. This week, I'm joined by Michael Schoen. Michael is the SVP and GM of marketing solutions at Neustar. 0:17 In our talk, we cover the future of identity and how measurement attribution will transform video advertising. Please enjoy my conversation with Michael Schoen. All right, Michael, thanks for joining us. Yeah. Thank you. 0:27 Happy to be here. Excellent. We like to start all of our guests off with the, the same icebreaker. Um, what was your first job, and what lessons did you take away from it that you've applied to your career? 0:37 Well, my, my very first job was as a short order chef at a Bun n' Burger in the Brunswick Square Mall in New Jersey, but I don't think that's what [laughs] that's what you intend. 0:44 Um, uh, so my first real job was with Accenture, uh, which w- at the time was still known as Andersen Consulting. 0:50 I was in the advanced technology group, which really meant anything that wasn't, uh, dealing with mainframes at the time. Um, and I think I, I took away two core lessons. 0:57 Uh, first was the value of, um, being able to simplify a problem. Um, b- both in terms of, um, actually being able to get at the, the core of the issue and, and actually being r- r- able to resolve the problem. 1:08 Um, but, but more importantly I think was the aid that it provided in being able to effectively communicate with a broader team. 1:14 Um, so being able to take a, a, a challenging complex issue, uh, break it down to its component pieces, and be able to communicate that back I think was an important lesson for me. 1:21 Um, and the second was the, the value of mentorship. 1:25 Um, I was fort- fortunate to find in my first few client engagements senior leaders who took a real interest in me, uh, provided constructive feedback, and helped, um, really guide me in, in my career. 1:34 Um, and I think in my own career I've aimed to kinda pay that forward and identify folks, um, who I can be helpful to, um, and, and help ensure that they are on a, a productive path for their own, for their own future. 1:46 I love it. And speaking of taking something complicated and making it simple, that's a perfect lead-in to, you know, how did you get started in the marketing technology space? 1:52 Seems like that skill would be applicable every day. Yeah, certainly. Uh, so after leaving Accenture, um, uh, I joined Warner Music Group for a few years. 2:00 Um, and, uh, after that I, I joined a small startup in LA, um, in the user-contributed content space. 2:06 Um, and that company was acquired in 2000 by Looksmart, um, which at the time was a leading search engine that powered Microsoft's internet directory. 2:13 Um, and that really brought me into the marketing and technology space. Um, over my time at Looksmart, um, we developed it into a pioneer in the paid search space. Um, so I got really steeped in search. 2:24 Um, after Looksmart I joined IPG Mediabrands, and that gave me much broader exposure both in terms of, um, the, the, the various aspects of marketing, uh, a- and ad tech technology, and also broad exposure to, uh, a lot of, uh, clients that we worked with directly. 2:41 That's great. Well, I guess, you know, before we kinda dive in, we've got a bunch of questions, um, you know, from our community. 2:47 Can you kinda give us an idea of, you know, what Neustar is and, and kinda how they fit in the advertising ecosystem? Yeah. 2:52 N- Neustar can be challenging for folks to understand because we don't fit in, fit simply into just one box. Um, Neustar really runs the gamut. 3:00 Um, I think the, the, the thing that ties all of Neustar solutions together, um, uh, is, uh, Neustar's unique position in identity, um, and, uh, analytics. 3:10 Um, so Neustar provides a, a broad set of solutions, um, but most simply we're now talking about unified identity and unified analytics, um, which are really about, uh, a set of solutions that help brands understand their customers from an omnichannel perspective, um, and then being able to understand from an analytics perspective, um, uh, the impact of their marketing investments and how to optimize them. 3:34 Excellent. Well, you know, a- and we kinda come at this more from a, you know, heavy focus on video, probably the, you know, 80% of our, our community is on the video space. 3:42 You know, there's a ton being written about, you know, whether it's announcements from, from, uh, Apple with the iPhone, or, you know, what's gonna happen with third-party cookies or kinda unified identity. 3:52 Um, how do you think that's gonna play out in the kinda broader video and, and TV ecosystem? Yeah, I mean, it certainly creates a, a real challenge. 3:59 I think if you take a step back, um, you know, over the last, you know, decade, there's been a real proliferation of consumer touchpoints. 4:05 Um, and the saving grace for the industry has been that, you know, with co- uh, cookies and mobile ad IDs, there's been a mechanism for tying them together, and I think it can feel to m- to many folks that the bottom is kinda falling out now, um, with, as you said, Apple shifting IDFA to, to, to an opt-in model, um, and Google being set to deprecate the third-party cookie, uh, early next year. 4:24 Um, and Neustar's approach, um, has always been founded in our, um, authoritative identity. Um, so Neustar has the ability to kind of understand consumers from an offline perspective. 4:35 Um, and so the way we've approached traditional TV, for example, has never been reliant on any of those digital identifiers. 4:41 Um, so certainly from an analytics perspective, the way that we incorporate, um, linear TV exposure into analytics models, both through marketing mix and multi-touch attribution, um, does not rely on any of those digital identifiers. 4:54 Um, but we've taken, um, a, a, a broad set of approaches as we think about how, um, brands are being challenged. Um, and we've brought to market with something we call Neustar Fabric. 5:04 Um, with Fabric we are combining, um, our, uh, uh, o- offline identity solutions, so our ability to kind of understand consumers from the perspective of name, address, phone number, email address, um, combined with a set of solutions that really tackle the problem in the digital space. 5:19 Um, you know, most brands are really focused on, um, uh, spending their digital investments within the walled gardens, and so we've built some unique integrations, um, with, uh, folks like, uh, Facebook and Pinterest and, and Twitter and LinkedIn and, and Amazon and others, um, that enable Neustar to incorporate, um, the impact of, uh, ad exposures in those environments, um, often with techniques that leverage advanced differential privacy, um, solutions to ensure that, um, while we're able to incorporate the incremental impact of those marketing exposures, we do it in, we do it in a way that does not, um, expose any, uh, any, uh, private user information, um, outside of the, the, the context of the walled gardens. 6:00 Um, we have also developed a set of clean room solutions, um, that allow us to partner with, um, with publishers, um, to provide the, the opportunity for brands and publishers to collaborate on data, um, again, in a way that ensures that each party's, uh, uh, data remains, uh, uh, re- remains well protected. 6:17 Um, and then finally, we are, uh, partnered, uh, with solutions like the Chrome Privacy Sandbox. Um, Neustar's made a proposal as part, part of the W3C working group, uh, known as Pelican. 6:26 Uh, folks who are familiar with what Google's doing in the Chrome Privacy Sandbox recognize that all of the proposals have bird names, and so we, we had to go with Pelican. Um, Pelican is an approach 6:35 that, um, will enable Neustar and, and others, um, to be able to incorporate, 6:41 um, uh, uh, exposures that can be measured via the Chrome browser in a way, again, leveraging differential privacy that does not expose user-level information, um, but still allows us to incorporate into advanced, uh, MTA models, uh, the impact of those exposures. 6:53 Um, and then finally, there, there's, there's, you know, one aspect of, um, this space that, that has gotten a lot of attention, which is what we refer to as the, um, uh, programmatic IDs and identified contacts. 7:04 Um, that's where publishers, um, have, uh, gotten consumers to provide some form of identity, typically an email address, um, and that provides the opportunity for identity providers to provide, um, an ID that can be used to tie, um, uh, exposures across multiple publishers. 7:20 Uh, so LiveRamp has proposed their ATS solution. Um, uh, The Trade Desk innovated with UID 2.0 that's now been handed over to, to Prebid. 7:27 Um, and Neustar has a similar solution we refer to as, as Fabric ID that is part of the overall, um, Fabric solution set. 7:33 Um, one unique thing we're doing here is that, you know, Fabric is fully interoperable with both ATS and UID, um, so we're not requiring that either brands or publishers make a bet on which of these programmatic IDs will be the, you know, the, quote unquote, winner. 7:46 Um, it's really about ensuring that we're providing maximum reach. 7:49 Um, and our specific approach with Fabric ID, because it leverages Neustar's identity, um, will provide some incremental reach above, uh, some of those other solutions. 7:59 Yeah, actually that, that being a big deal, I mean, the, the, you know, the world's just gotten much more complicated in the last 10 years and, uh, you know, needing to, uh, you have multiple identity partners to operate in an environment where you're already dealing with multiple walled gardens, uh, would be quite the challenge. 8:17 Yeah, indeed. Indeed. 8:20 Well, one thing, you know, a- again, kinda look at the video space, uh, you know, topic that's coming up, you know, almost daily for, for our customer base is, is attribution and kinda business outcomes. 8:30 You know, obviously it's been around in digital for, you know, display and social and search for, you know, forever. 8:37 Um, what do you see really happening to the video and kinda the linear space and, you know, what's, what's that gonna look like here in the next couple years? From an attribution perspective? 8:45 Yeah, either attribution or, or, or what, what do you see people doing beyond just, uh, you know, reach and frequency or age and gender? 8:53 It seems like, you know, we're, we're kinda getting out of just audience targeting or audience measurement alone being the new metric and that people are wanting to get more mid and down funnel metrics on, on video. 9:04 Yeah, I mean, c- certainly, uh, that's the case, and, you know, one of the ways in which Neustar has been helping brands is by providing, um, a unified approach to video. 9:13 Um, so you're not thinking about digital video and linear TV as being separate channels for, but really, you know, part of a whole. 9:19 Um, and looking at them holistically in terms of how they're actually impacting, um, uh, consumer propensity to, to convert. 9:26 Um, and so, uh, Neustar's unified analytics approach, um, is holistic, um, and it combines traditional marketing mix techniques with multi-touch attribution. 9:35 Um, that's important because, uh, with MTA techniques we're able to, um, incorporate the differences in consumer propensities between audiences. 9:44 There may be some sets of your, of your customer base that are likely to convert, that have a, a, a propensity, um, uh, you know, towards your brand al- already. 9:52 Um, there are other aspects of your audience that are less likely to convert. And the, the impact of the, the video channel may be different for those different audiences. 10:00 Um, marketing mix though is still important because there are kind of endemic factors, um, in, uh, in the industry. 10:07 Um, uh, the economy may be impacting your purchases, and so being able to incorporate those factors is, is, is critical as well. 10:14 Um, you know, one of the things that's unique about Neustar's approach is not only do we, um, incorporate the impact of linear TV through marketing mix, um, but through partnerships with, with folks like iSpot we're also incorporating linear TV exposure into MTA models right alongside, um, uh, digital, digital video, um, and, uh, and, and connected TV, uh, solutions as well. 10:34 Um, and our approach there again is really focused on understanding the incremental impact of marketing. 10:39 Um, so it's not just about, um, uh, being able to i- identify folks who were going to convert anyway, um, but really being able to understand, um, uh, the incremental value of your marketing investment. 10:50 Um, that then feeds back into, um, the, the topic of targeting. Um, so when you're running those, um, the, in particular digital video campaigns, 11:01 being able to build an audience, um, of the consumers who, um, are most likely to be influenceable by marketing activities, um, uh, drives a lot of value. 11:10 Um, you know, historically there's been a, a, a big trend in, uh, ad tech to try and identify the consumers who are going to convert and go ahead and target them, um, 'cause that results in your marketing campaign looking like it has a, a really high ROI, uh, because the percentage of consumers who you targeted, uh, to convert is really high. 11:28 Um, that's not driving a lot of incremental value. Um, if you're targeting consumers who are going to convert anyway, what, what have you done other than spend some, uh, some marketing media dollars? 11:36 Um, so our, our approach is really to leverage our analytics to help predictively build audiences, um, who you can incrementally use, uh, to drive, uh, business impact. Excellent. 11:49 Yeah, I think that's gonna be a big trend. 11:51 Uh, you know, like I said, from, you know, three or four years ago it was not something we were getting asked about a lot on the video side and, and today it, it's almost become table stakes, um, with both the buy and sell side. 12:03 Uh, which is pretty fascinating. Yeah. Um, well, I got, you know, a couple more questions on the identity front. You know, one, as you look forward five years, 12:10 you know, uh, this is a tough one, especially for this space, you know, what do you, what do you think the, the world looks like on the id- on the identity side? 12:17 And then what do you expect your customers to keep doing, start doing and stop doing? Um, so, so, uh, you know, I, I think identity, um, in marketing is becoming ever more important. 12:29 Um, you know, brands, uh, especially now recognize the importance of building kind of direct meaningful long-term relationships directly with, uh, with consumers. 12:39 Um, and, you know, these recent changes we're seeing in the digital ecosystem kind of underscore that because, um, uh, th- there's the risk of being disintermediated by some of these technology providers. 12:49 Um, and the only way for brands to kind of withstand that in the long term is to ensure that they've got, uh, kind of that direct relationship. 12:54 Um, so overall, you know, brands are certainly going to be making, um, more investments, um, in those relationships, um, and then an investment in enterprise identity to help maximize the value. 13:04 Um, that's certainly an area where, um, you know, Neustar's been focused with their unified identity solution, which is really about pr- providing a solve for that enterprise identity, uh, infrastructure problem. 13:15 Um, it, it... with, with unified identity, what Neustar is doing, um, is helping to ensure that brands get the most leverage from those investments in first-party data, um, which can include, you know, uh, uh, s- uh, 13:28 solving data hygiene problems, so ensuring that the, the data that the brand, uh, collects, um, from consumers, um, is correct and kept up to date and, and is deduplicated. 13:37 Um, it's also about enriching that data, so providing additional attributes, um, to, to kinda maximize the value. 13:43 Um, and then providing solutions for activation, um, so integrations a- across the ecosystem so that, um, the brands are able to actually connect with consumers across all channels. 13:53 Um, and, um, i- in terms of what brands are going to stop doing, I think it's, uh, uh, kind of well past time that, that brands really stop with things like last click attribution. 14:03 Um, and, uh, uh, uh, may, may, may still be optimistic, but I'm hoping that five years from now that's no longer happening. 14:09 Um, and, um, brands are not still falling into what I call the retargeting trap, um, where, you know, retargeting looks great because, um, it, it, it, it seems to show really high marketing ROI, but it's, it's only because you're, you're, you're kind of giving all the value to the last click in, in the value chain. 14:26 Yeah, the last point's really interesting, and I, I've kinda got a theory on this, but would love to hear your thoughts. 14:30 Do you think that's more because the, the marketer is reliant, so reliant on reporting and analytics from the media seller, and obviously if you're a media seller, that the last click looks, looks great, you're gonna push that? 14:42 Or, you know, what do you think the, the driver is why that's lasted so long? 14:45 Yeah, I mean, it, it, it's certainly true that, um, you know, last click attribution, um, as provided by individual media channels, um, is, is, uh, incredibly self-serving. 14:55 Um, and it, it is the view that looks, that, that allows each media channel to kind of p- put its best foot forward. Um, you know, to be fair, it, it, it's also the simplest solution. 15:04 Um, in a world in which the technology has gotten hard, um, and in many cases has, you know, continues to get harder, um, it, it, it's easy to fall back on the, the low-hanging fruit. 15:13 Um, you know, folks may realize that in, uh, Google's initial, um, announcement of the Chrome Privacy Sandbox, the one implementation that's been provided for attribution is, uh, last click. 15:25 Um, and it, and, you know, a- again, you can argue that, that that is self-serving, but it's also the, the, the approach that is technically the easiest to provide. 15:32 Um, but it is incredibly important that brands recognize that, that the investment in, in, um, being in, being able to implement a more sophisticated solution, um, is worth it. 15:41 Um, because again, the, the value of marketing needs to be measured on the incremental impact it has in terms of driving, uh, actually new sales. Absolutely. Well, looking, you know, can... 15:52 Kind of the questions we've asked today, what's one area that you think has the most value that really no one's talking about in the identity space? 16:00 Uh, so I, I think it's a, it's, um, uh, the cleanliness of the, of offline data sets. 16:06 You know, I think there's been a lo- a lot of focus on, um, being able to maximize the, um, the online digital reach of your first-party data. 16:16 Um, I think the challenge is that, you know, brands generally are, uh, unable to directly measure whether or not the audiences that they're reaching through those solutions, um, uh, are accurate. 16:27 You know, whether or not you're actually reaching the right consumers. And so I think focusing on the kind of quality and accuracy of the off- of the offline data, um, i- is really key. 16:36 Um, I think the, the, you know, the other challenge, which we touched on at the beginning of the conversation, um, is, you know, a lot of brands have pieced together solutions a- across multiple providers over time. 16:47 Um, and, um, it has resulted in what we now refer to as, as data chaos, where, um, if you're working for, if you're working with multiple providers, uh, of identity solutions, uh, across activation and onboarding and, and, and, and data hygiene, um, you may find that you have made kind of, uh, improvements in that data across those individual silos, um, but you're not maximizing the value of your investment, um, because, um, there's a significant amount of data loss involved if across each of your marketing channels you're working with a different iden- identity provider. 17:19 Um, and, and there's a loss of fidelity that occurs. What... So, you know, I guess a follow-up on that, have you seen the quality of the offline data improve in recent years, or has it kinda deteriorated? 17:34 Kinda ask this more 'cause I, what we find with our customer base is that, you know, 10 years ago it was very rare that they were, 17:42 uh, combining their CRM data with offline consumer data from multiple pr- providers, but it's much more common today for us to find a agency or marketer that's trying to combine a lot of this on their own. 17:55 Um, do you see that... Has that helped or hurt or, you know, what, what have you seen overall in the cleanliness of the offline data? 18:00 Yeah, so, so, we're, we're certainly seeing that same trend, and I think it's because of all the things that we've, we've spoken about. 18:06 Um, you know, brands recognize that they need to be pulling together, um, all aspects of their first-party relationship with consumers. 18:13 Um, and I think that the long-term trend is towards improving the quality of that data. 18:19 There is that short-term challenge though, which is that the data they've collected in these individual channels often you don't agree, um, uh, and, and are not connected. 18:27 And so it, it kind of necessitates the, the need for, for, uh, working with an enterprise identity provider. 18:33 Uh, we worked recently with, uh, a large electronics retailer, um, that did kind of an audit of their own internal systems and recognized that across all the different touchpoints they might actually recognize an individual consumer with 46 different identifiers. 18:46 Um, uh, which is just, you know, insane and, and obviously gets in the way of being able to maximize, uh, the value of their relationship with, with that, with that individual consumer. 18:54 Um, and so, you know, i- identifying that as a challenge, um, and then making a real investment in, in solving for it, um, i- is certainly, uh, a requirement today. Excellent. 19:06 Well, we'll get you out of here on one more question that, uh, we, we ask all our guests. Uh, if you could c- get your entire team to read one book right now, what would it be and why? 19:16 Uh, so, you know, over the last year Neustar's made a, a big investment in a diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative. 19:22 Um, and as part of that program, we've actually just started off, uh, like a CEO, uh, a CEO, uh, book club, um, to help, um, drive conversations within the organization. 19:31 Uh, and the first book that the, the team is, is tackling is, uh, Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. Um, it's historical fiction, starts in the 1950s about twin sisters growing up in a, a small southern Black community. 19:43 Uh, the twins, you know, run away at age 16 and, and end up with pretty divergent paths, and it's a story of race, gender, sexuality, and the complexities of identity. Um, uh, it's a award-winning book. 19:53 Apparently HBO is now developing a limited series from the, from the novel. 19:56 Um, incredibly well-written, compelling story, um, and, uh, certainly encourage folks on my team to read it because we're gonna be u- using that to kind of tee up some challenging conversations with the organization that are inc- incredibly important for us. 20:08 Excellent. Great recommendation. Uh, well, Michael, I've loved the conversation. Uh, anything else we missed? Uh, no. I, I think it's been a, a great conversation. 20:17 A- again, just kind of underscoring the kind of the challenging times that we face today as marketers, um, and, uh, uh, the, the role that, uh, solutions like i- identity and analytics play in kind of charting the path forward. 20:30 Excellent. Well, I'm grateful for your time, and I know our community's gonna love the conversation, so thank you. Great. Thank you very much. [upbeat music] Thank you for joining us on this episode of Screen Bytes. 20:37 I hope you enjoyed the discussion as much as I did. You can find out more about Crossscreen Media at crossscreenmedia.com, and please don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, Straight to the Screens. 20:46 You can find us on social media @crossscreenmedia. Join us next time for more insights and analysis straight from the experts.
