Taking Back Control of Your Data from the Ad Tech Supply Chain

In this piece, Crystal Box Co-founder and CEO, Vaughan Chandler, explores practical advice for brands to regain the control of their customer data.

Yesterday, the ACCC released its report from its Digital Advertising Services Inquiry and, not surprisingly, one of the report’s key themes is how Google exerts undue and detrimental market forces from its dominant position across the digital media supply chain.

Further the report outlines how Google’s access to customer data, exclusive inventory and integration of ad tech services at each stage in the digital media supply chain had underpinned the tech giant’s dominance and led to a less competitive ad tech industry.

The report continues to outline the need for new regulatory solutions

"to address Google’s dominance and to restore competition to the ad tech sector for the benefit of businesses and consumers. We recommend rules be considered to manage conflicts of interest, prevent anti-competitive self-preferencing, and ensure rival ad tech providers can compete on their merits."

Rod Sims, ACCC Chair

Whilst the report makes clear it will take some time for regulatory reform to provide a market-wide approach. In absence of this, the key question for Australian businesses is ‘how can we avoid these structural challenges in advance of regulatory reform?'

The good news is there are practical alternatives to transfer the value and control of data and media from the digital supply chain back to your brand. And this won’t come at the cost of avoiding the benefits that Google or any other ad tech provider can create, instead our approach focuses on adjusting how brands manage their data in order to take back control. 

Crystal Box’s vision has been built specifically on this notion – that it is possible to bring the control and power of customer data back to its rightful owners: the customer and the company with the direct customer relationship.

So, how do brands take back control of their data?

To do this, brands and businesses need to address and embrace two key themes. First, they should take back control of their data from the digital supply chain and second, they should reduce the length of their digital supply chain to ensure there is full transparency.

The path to actioning these two themes is thankfully not as complex as it may seem, in simple terms there are six key steps to take in regaining control.

How to take back control of your data from the supply chain:

1. Deploy 1^st party tags rather than rely on 3^rd party cookies.
2. Bring the orchestration of your audience trading into your environment rather than have it occurring inside Google or other downstream parts of the supply chain.
3. Ensure your consent framework provides the appropriate provisions for your business as well as transparency and control to the customer.

How to reduce the digital supply chain and gain full transparency:

4. Choose your SSP wisely.
5. Create direct connections between your audience and publishers and use their header bidding capabilities.
6. Don’t rely solely on channel or campaign level data to measure the impact of your media. Instead, seek event level and customer action data to monitor effectiveness of the supply chain and your budget.

Getting started doesn’t need a lot of time or significant infrastructure development if you know what you’re doing – but it does change the power imbalance in the supply chain dramatically.  This leads to lower ‘tech tax’ budget leakage, improved marketing/personalisation performance – and importantly it means that you control your customer relationship and the associated data of that relationship.

We hope that by bringing simplicity through briefly articulating the core steps above, we will allow many businesses to start navigating this complex space on their own.  If you’re looking for more advice or want to get to market faster with a new approach, the team at Crystal Box would be happy to help.