What is a data management platform?

In the context of mobile marketing,  a data management platform (sometimes referred to as a DMP, marketing data management platform or advertising data management platform) is a piece of software that holds all data relating to a business’ customer segments/audiences and ad campaigns. Marketers can view and manipulate this data, forming insights and using these to inform and drive targeted (and sometimes personalized) marketing campaigns. To effectively store the great swathes of data they deal with, many data management platforms use cloud storage.

Typically, the data within a data management platform follows a cyclical pattern, as demonstrated below. Data is used to build a picture of all customers and create segments/audiences—these audiences are targeted with specific marketing and the results are used to optimize the creation of similar audiences. Data on performance with these new audiences is collected and this loop continues, with previous campaign performance always informing future marketing activities.

Data management platforms are often integrated with other tools, for example sharing data with demand-side platforms (DSPs) and supply-side platforms (SSPs) to improve customer targeting.

The true value of data management platforms lies in their ability to help marketers understand customer behavior and what’s prompting customers to to take action (e.g. make a purchase). By gaining insights into the what and why, robust marketing campaigns can be created and optimized, introducing important efficiencies for marketers in terms of time and budget.

Data management platforms collect a myriad of customer data, that can be categorized in three groups:

• First-party data: Data a business has direct access to, for example from CRM systems or site visits.
• Second-party data: Data shared with a business by another business (e.g. a partner).
• Third-party data: External data from sites and social media platforms, used to supplement first-party data - this often comes from data brokers.

Marketers use a combination of this data to place customers in particular segments/audiences and target them more effectively. Once audiences have been created, personalization can be a strong tool to engage an audience through marketing.

It’s important to note that after profiling and segmenting, the customer data produced by data management platforms is anonymized. Marketers will never have access to personally identifiable information (PII).

Datascape is Adjust’s data management platform - our analytics solution that lets you view all of your data in one place so you can quickly find the insights you need to make the right decisions. Within Datascape, your audience base can be segmented into cohorts to facilitate effective targeted marketing.

In the privacy-centric era, with SKAN and the upcoming Privacy Sandbox on Android limiting access to device IDs, Adjust’s new incrementality solution InSight leverages machine learning to uncover granular campaign information from aggregated data sources. You can then bring this data into your Datascape view so you can continue to effectively optimize your marketing campaigns on iOS and beyond.

To learn more about how Adjust empowers mobile marketers, take a look at our Datascape analytics solution, or request a demo.