At the ongoing Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Criteo’s Chief Product Officer, Todd Parsons, who brings nearly 20 years of experience in the marketing, advertising and data space, cautions that unless a solution mindset comes into play, the advertising and technology ecosystem will continue to face some of its persistent challenges.
Reflecting on the themes prevalent at Cannes Lions 2024, Parsons reiterates the importance of understanding the entire consumer journey. “The discussion around the consumer journey, where it starts, where it ends and the touchpoints in between, is on everyone’s mind,” he says. Citing the shift in how consumers discover brands and products, increasingly through retail media, social platforms and non-traditional search engines, he explains how this poses concerns for marketers and media owners, who must now stitch together these fragmented journeys to create meaningful consumer experiences.
The Addressability Conundrum
One significant challenge Parsons pointed out is the issue of addressability. "A big theme with addressability right now is taking the tools we have to stitch the customer journey together for relevance and personalisation while respecting privacy,” he explains. The conventional use of tabular data and deterministic or probabilistic matching has become increasingly difficult due to fragmented data across different platforms. The solution lies in adopting advanced AI, which offers new tools and capabilities to provide personalised experiences without direct data matches.
"We are at a very special moment,” Parsons notes, adding, “right between the old world of deterministic matching and the new world of advanced AI.” Advanced AI, with its deep learning models, requires training data and value exchange between data providers and recipients, all while protecting privacy. This progression promises to simplify the complex task of data stitching and addressability, making the consumer journey smoother and more efficient.
A Three-pronged Approach
Parsons emphasises the need for clear strategies in managing addressability in today's fragmented environment. Criteo’s approach involves three key pillars -- activating first-party data, leveraging closed environments and integrating new interest groups through privacy frameworks such as Google’s Privacy Sandbox. “First-party data activation is crucial. We have two teams dedicated to this, ensuring our marketing partners can use it efficiently with advanced AI,” he says.
Closed environments, such as social platforms and retail media, present another focus area. Criteo works with over 225 retailers and social platforms like Meta to ensure seamless addressability. “These environments don’t have open auction programmatic capabilities, so making addressability work here is paramount," the company’s CPO explains.
The third pillar involves adapting to new privacy-centric frameworks. “Interest groups and frameworks like Privacy Sandbox and Microsoft’s Parakeet are beginning to unfurl. We need to ensure these capabilities are available and efficient for both advertisers and media partners,” Parsons adds.
The AI Of Today & Tomorrow
AI plays a central role in tying these pillars together. While today's AI focuses on machine learning and data interoperability, the future lies in deep learning. Parsons says, “Deep learning allows us to infer behaviours and experiences across fragmented environments. This advantage helps us graduate AI from today’s models to tomorrow’s, benefiting our marketing partners.”
For brands, the implications of these advancements are significant. There is a need for deduplicating audiences, frequency capping exposures and efficient bidding across environments to avoid media waste. “AI must help in these areas to prevent oversaturation and ensure a smooth consumer journey,” Parsons points out.
Measurement also needs improvement, with a shift from last-click attribution to a holistic view of the consumer journey. “We need to track the entire journey, not just the final click,” he states, explaining, “This holistic view is crucial for true performance measurement.”
Expressing his expectations for the Cannes Lions Festival week, he remarks, “We need to push our agenda for data sharing and collaboration with our partners to make it more fluid for marketers. Retail media, in particular, holds great potential but depends on solving data collaboration and AI utilisation challenges. It is like an adolescent athlete with immense potential. We need to advance this cause significantly at Cannes.”
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