This interview was originally published by Communicate Middle East.
In this video interview about data and measurement with our MENA CEO, Nadim Samara, and Annalect MENA’s director-marketing solutions, Andreas Frangeskides, the attention quickly turned to Omni, our agency data platform. Its ability to link audience, media and now creative insights to our planning systems became the central focus of how our agencies work with data. While data in marketing and advertising is nothing new, the data points have increased exponentially. Especially when you consider that they now include clients’ actual business data.
In this interview, Samara and Frangeskides address various topics, including structure, particularly how Annalect works with OMD, PHD and Hearts & Science, and data neutrality, working withmany independent partners. In a recent report about agency data platforms, Forrester established that Omni has the most robust list of data partners among all the platforms they analyzed.
This precision marketing and insights platform is designed to identify and define personalized consumer experiences at scale to drive superior business outcomes for clients across different practice areas including creative, CRM, and media. It brings together multiple technologies and data partners under one UI to support advanced planning and innovation. Of critical importance is the fact Omni provides a single-view of the consumer from insights development to audience building, channel planning, creative development, activation, optimization and reporting/attribution.
As its goal is to provide a deeper understanding of customers, one key question was the compliance with GDPR standards, a concern that now transcends the EU and has inspired similar legislation in other jurisdictions, including the Middle East.
The impact of an agency data platform like Omni is being felt externally, on clients’ business KPIs as well as marketing ones, but also internally. It requires new capabilities, new skill-sets and new mindsets. New iterations come all the time and this helps making sure the platform is always relevant and essential.
Another aspect of the interview was the breadth of the data applications, from media to creative, from strategic to operational considerations, and from advertising to commerce. As Frangeskides explained, “Omni is an insights engine for creative directors as much as for data scientists. It leverages a people-based understanding of behaviors across paid, earned and owned media to offer game changing insights – not based on anecdote but real-time, accurate and representative data.”
You can find out more in the video interview here and in an article in the April edition of Communicate magazine.
