Several years ago, a host of brands decided to “in-house” their programmatic media buying in order to reduce middleman fees and increase transparency and control. But many soon realized they needed support managing technology and execution. So, rather than truly “in-housing” programmatic, what they really did was restructure their contracts.
The same thing is now happening with advertising data. As brands build out their first-party data strategies and work to assemble post-cookie capabilities, many are “in-housing” to remain in control of their data. A common strategy is for brands to create their own ID, which unifies their data and insights per unique profile.
To ensure success, brands need to accomplish a few important tasks. They need to develop a usable in-house ID, evaluate the data feeding into their ID, then fill in the blanks so their ID is usable in the real world.