TL;DR

Over the past 6 years, digital marketers have watched as the rise of privacy technologies has undercut the effectiveness of their efforts across paid media channels, owned media channels, and diminished the value of their data and insights.

Over the same time, new Marketing Technology Infrastructures have emerged, allowing more technologically sophisticated companies to turn back the clock on their marketing ecosystem, achieving and even surpassing the effectiveness of the old pixel-based ecosystem. 

By adopting a Modern Marketing Technology Infrastructure, digital marketers typically experience:

  1. A 20%+ increase in return from Paid Media Channels
  2. The ability to send 200% to 300% as many emails, increasing revenue to owned media channels
  3. 20% increase in data capture, enabling higher quality data-driven decision making

Introduction

In the fast-evolving digital landscape, the proliferation of privacy concerns has posed significant challenges for online advertising, making it increasingly difficult for marketers to achieve success in their digital marketing efforts. Technologies such as iOS14, iOS15, ETP, ITP, and the widespread use of privacy blockers have created a perfect storm, reducing visibility and undermining the performance of both owned and paid media channels. However, in response to these challenges, innovative companies have developed sophisticated solutions that offer a way to combat and reverse the negative effects caused by these changes.

The Problem

The convergence of privacy-related problems, including the rise of privacy blockers, limitations imposed by iOS14 and iOS15, and the impact of ETP and ITP, has resulted in widespread loss of revenue from digital marketing efforts. In 2017, it was standard for eCommerce companies to regularly achieve an 8x ROAS on Facebook. In today's environment a 4x ROAS is considered excellent. Companies are unknowingly sending ½ as many emails and SMS as they could be, and are analyzing the behaviors of a subset of all user behavior.

Privacy Blockers

The rise of privacy blockers, such as tools like uBlock Origin and Adblock Plus, alongside native ad-blocking functionalities integrated into browsers such as Safari and Firefox, has significantly limited the visibility of ad platforms, analytics trackers, email service providers, and more. On average, privacy blockers cause businesses to experience a data loss of between 20% and 30%. However, for certain customer demographics, particularly for companies that cater to knowledge workers, this data loss can soar as high as 45%.

iOS14

The implementation of iOS14 has dramatically reduced the visibility of paid media platforms, most notably impacting Facebook. This reduction in data accessibility has undercut the effectiveness of these platforms by hindering proper attribution and degrading the quality of AI training data, impacting the performance of paid media campaigns.

iOS15

With the introduction of iOS15, the visibility of email marketing has also taken a hit. The reduced functionality of open rate metrics greatly diminished the usefulness of open rate as a KPI, making it more challenging for marketers to accurately gauge the effectiveness of their email campaigns.

ETP & ITP

ETP (Firefox) and ITP (Safari) have imposed restrictions on cookies, even within a first-party context, leading to their automatic deletion after just seven days. This limitation results in a significant loss of identified user activity. Typically, 10% to 15% of previously identified users are incorrectly tracked as anonymous, limiting company’s ability to send emails, understand user flows, and ad platform’s ability to correct attribute, retarget, and train their AI.

The Good News

Despite all the challenges faced in today’s digital marketing ecosystem, there is good news: these problems are reversible with the adoption of a Modern Marketing Technology Infrastructure. By embracing the right set of tools and technologies companies can turn back the clock on their digital marketing efforts, increasing paid media ROI, owned channel revenue, and improve their decision making via 100% visibility onto their behavioral analytics.

Benefits of a Modern Marketing Technology Infrastructure

A Modern Marketing Technology Infrastructure allows companies to turn back the clock, reversing the damage done by the aforementioned problems and achieve dramatic increases in performance in their digital marketing efforts.

Improved ROI of Paid Channels

For most companies, the most significant value a Modern Marketing Technology Infrastructure drives is the ability to improve the ROI of paid media channels by 20% or more. The combination of server side tracking, server side cookies, and numerous identification technologies allows for a much higher overall event count combined with an increased identification rate. This combination typically results in a 50% to 100% (or greater) increase in identified events, providing the paid media platform’s AI algorithm with both better data and more data, making their ad placements more effective and increasing ROI.

Increased Revenue from Owned Media Channels

Another major benefit offered by a Modern Marketing Technology Infrastructure is the ability to increase email and SMS sends by 200% to 300%. Leveraging a combination of server-side tracking and advanced identification technologies, businesses can both send a greater number of events and identify more users on their websites. This results in a substantial increase in the volume of identifiable events reaching the Email Service Providers (ESPs), resulting in more sends, and ultimately driving higher revenue through owned channels.

Improved Data Driven Decision-Making

A Modern Marketing Technology Infrastructure enables companies to improve their data visibility by 25% to 42%, improving their decision making capabilities with higher quality analytics and insights. This allows marketers to gain a more accurate understanding of their audience and make data-driven decisions that drive better results.

The Modern Marketing Technology Infrastructure

Introduction

The Modern Marketing Technology Infrastructure can be broken down into three core components:

Core Data Services

At the heart of the Modern Marketing Technology Infrastructure are the Core Data Services. These services act as the lifeblood of the system, ensuring that data flows seamlessly to downstream destinations. Key components of Core Data Services include:

  1. Analytics SDK
  2. Server Side Tracking
  3. CDP
  4. ETL
  5. Data Warehouse
  6. Reverse ETL

Implementations

Along with the above Core Data Services, there are a number of implementations that are critical to the increasing ROI of a company’s digital marketing ecosystem. These implementations may be included as features of the Core Data Services, or may require additional engineering.

  1. First Party Analytics SDK Fetching
  2. Server Side Cookies
  3. Email Click Tracking
  4. Cross Device Cookie Matching

Downstream Marketing Services

The Downstream Marketing Services are where a company's marketing data is transformed into revenue-generating actions. These services encompass a range of functionalities, such as training artificial intelligence algorithms to optimize ad targeting, sending targeted emails during critical stages of the user's lifecycle, and analyzing user behavior to drive strategic decisions. The key components of Downstream Marketing Services include:

  1. Paid Media Platforms
  2. ESP
  3. Business Intelligence Visualization
  4. Behavioral Analytics

The effectiveness of these Downstream Marketing Services relies on the accuracy and quality of the data fed into them. A strong foundation in Core Data Services and Implementations is essential to optimize the performance of the Downstream Marketing Services, ensuring that businesses can leverage their marketing data effectively and drive revenue-generating outcomes.

Core Data Services

Analytics SDK

An Analytics SDK empowers businesses to collect and process data on their website or mobile app, enabling accurate tracking and capturing of customer interactions and behavior.

Server Side Tracking

The Server Side Tracking service allows companies to pass their web data through a first party context, avoiding privacy blockers and ensuring 100% tracking.

CDP

A CDP in this context is mainly used for its event federation capabilities. By sending all data to the CDP before forwarding it to the Downstream Marketing Services, companies ensure data consistency and significantly cut down on engineering overhead to build and maintain a Modern Marketing Technology Infrastructure. 

ETL (Extract, Transform, Load)

ETL processes handle the extraction, transformation, and loading of data from various sources into a central repository or data warehouse.

While most modern architectures use an ELT (extract, load, transform) process as it is more scalable and more robust, this article is using the ETL term to describe the process of moving data into a warehouse where analytics can be run on it.

Data Warehouse

A Data Warehouse serves as a centralized storage and analysis platform, housing structured and unstructured data from various sources. It enables advanced analytics, reporting, and data-driven decision-making, and can also be used to generate Synthetic Events via Reverse ETL.

Reverse ETL

Reverse ETL facilitates the flow of data from the data warehouse to the Downstream Marketing Services. This is most notably used for synthetic events generated from the database (eg: Payment Processed) or aggregate user properties (eg: Lifetime Value).

Implementations

First Party Analytics SDK Fetching

First party Analytics SDK fetching allows your analytics library to be fetched in a first party context, ensuring it is not blocked by privacy blockers. This is key in the holistic implementation of Server Side Tracking, which enables a 20% to 30% increase in data capture.

Server Side Cookies

Server Side Cookies allow companies to increase their identification rate by 15% or more by working around the limitations that ETP and ITP have placed on client side cookies.

ETP and ITP have limited the length websites can set cookies to last for, even in a first party context, to 7 days. This means any identified user that visits a businesses’ site 8 days apart will be incorrectly reported as anonymous.

Server Side Cookies do not fall victim to these technologies, though, and last beyond the 7 day window. Typically companies see a 15% increase in identification rate when implementing Server Side Cookies.

Email Click Tracking

Email Click Tracking is an implementation that allows 100% of email & SMS traffic to be identified. Implementing Email Click Tracking typically results in a greater than 100% lift in identification rate.

Cross Device Cookie Matching

Cross Device Cookie Matching is extremely important for increasing the overall effectiveness of your paid media channels. By combining other identification technologies like Server Side Cookies and Email Click Tracking, as well as a persistent server side store of these cookies, companies see 50% to 100% increase in identification rate on events.

Downstream Marketing Services

Paid Media Platforms

Paid media platforms are instrumental in enabling businesses to advertise and promote their products or services across diverse digital channels, including search engines, social media platforms, and display networks. This encompasses:

These platforms operate sophisticated AI algorithms that power their marketplace auction systems. The performance of these platforms for businesses relies heavily on the availability of user data that provides insights into how users interact with their websites. The more detailed and reliable this data, the more effectively these AI algorithms can optimize ad targeting, bidding strategies, and overall campaign performance.

ESP (Email Service Providers)

ESP, or Email Service Providers, are platforms dedicated to enabling businesses to manage and execute their email marketing campaigns efficiently. These platforms offer features such as email creation, list management, automation, segmentation, and performance tracking. By leveraging ESPs, marketers gain full control over their email sending capabilities, reducing the need for engineering involvement and enabling faster and more efficient execution of email campaigns. 

Behavioral Analytics

Behavioral Analytics tools capture and analyze user behavior data, providing deep insights into how individuals interact with digital platforms, products, or services. These tools track user actions, patterns, and preferences, helping businesses understand customer journeys, identify opportunities for personalization, and optimize user experiences. Behavioral analytics empower businesses to make data-driven decisions and deliver tailored marketing strategies that resonate with their target audience.

Business Intelligence Visualization

Business Intelligence Visualization tools allow businesses to transform complex data from their data warehouse into visually appealing and interactive dashboards, charts, and reports. These tools enable businesses to gain comprehensive insights, track key performance indicators, and communicate data-driven insights effectively. With intuitive visualizations, decision-makers can understand trends, identify opportunities, and make informed strategic decisions that drive business growth.

It typically takes longer to achieve insights with Business Intelligence Visualization tools than compared to Behavioral Analytics platforms, but they tend to be more flexible and can provide insights that Behavioral Analytics platforms cannot.

Conclusion

Investing in a Modern Marketing Technology Infrastructure is an opportunity to fundamentally change your digital marketing ecosystem, increasing effectiveness and ultimately boosting returns. Following the outlined blueprint, you are not just adapting to a new landscape, but capitalizing on it to significantly scale your digital marketing performance.

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