KYC To Improve Marketing KPI?

Customers Less Likely To Respond To Brands After One Bad Mobile Experience

Gone are the days when you could carry out the “one size fits all” philosophy to your marketing campaigns. Today you need to focus on an array of parameters to draw up an effective marketing strategy.

If your target group is not clearly defined and marketed to, you run the risk of hurting your brand image since customers are less likely to engage with a company after one unpleasant mobile experience. And BPRISE wants to help you make the best decisions for your business.

Dear Marketer, Do You Know Your Customers?

A study by Nielsen highlights that only  47% of the digital campaigns in the UK reach their target. This is because marketers apply traditional targeting methods to digital and don’t really know their customers as well as they should. It is tricky because marketers not only have to engage with their existing customers but also expand their reach.

We’re saying that as marketers you have a great tool available at your disposal today – Data! And you can witness first-hand how digging into your data will nurture leads that make larger purchases than those who are not nurtured. Here’s proof!

Another study by US Business Executive showed that 64% of marketers agree that a data driven approach drives marketing success on a global scale. And data analytics forms the base of a data-driven marketing strategy. BPRISE helps you leverage modern data collection and analysis tools to get actionable and valuable information about your customers.

Try Out The BPRISE Unified Marketing Solution, Covering Data & Marketing

We’re thrilled to announce our approach with marketing, influenced by your data. Our offline-to-online solution applies analytics to your offline customer data and helps you launch relevant, personalized marketing campaigns from our marketing platform.

You can also quickly launch marketing campaigns from the BPRISE marketing dashboard, across multiple channels, including:

  • Facebook
  • Email
  • SMS
  • Websites

You can track your marketing ads, emails, SMSs and more on one single platform – the BPRISE Manager Platform. This enterprise platform  gives you performance insights that can further help your retargeting initiatives. Invest in the right set of technologies to drive your marketing KPIs.

Start with an understanding of your customers with data analytics, engage them with personalized marketing and don’t get short-changed in marketing. Let’s talk data and business, shall we?

Data Mountains & How To Deal With Them?

“In God we trust, all others must bring data” – William Edwards Deming (statistician)

The numerous marketing systems today with distinct functions, make marketers switch between multiple tabs/windows to effectively market and understand its impact. Additionally, the digital advertising spectrum keeps widening with the growing numbers of mar-tech providers, technologists and data solution providers. What solution really maps individual customer journeys or which one allows you to market effectively? Do you spend time in sourcing reports and preparing a single Excel doc to have a holistic customer profile?

Because according to Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report 2017, on an average an enterprise uses 91 marketing automated platforms. Dive a little deeper and you’ll find that based on “functions”, there are close to 180 display and programmatic advertising solutions and around 161 marketing automation and campaign management platforms. This clearly depicts how complicated the life of a marketer really is. Multiple platforms that result in data silos also bring about work duplication, which means, more man-hours are spent on collation of reports than actually driving business with insights. Disconnected platforms that house customer data make data management challenging.

Busy But Not Bright?

Marketers spend hours collating data from point-of-sale (POS) systems, client relationship management (CRM) software, loyalty program databases and more. Once this tedious task is through, they resort to marketing platforms and automation tools. Do you see how many platforms and interfaces they deal with? Imagine the amount of offline data (POS, CRM etc.) a marketer really has in reserve? This is where a platforms like customer data platforms (CDP) and data management platforms (DMP) becomes handy. CDPs allow marketers to exercise control over their customer data but does not that erase the need for a marketing automation platform. CDP vendors are specialized in automation, tag management and/or deriving personalized insights, but still does not cover marketing attribution. Similarly, DMPs power data-driven marketing powered but cannot double as a marketing platform.

Marketers have their hands on multiple software platforms but they’re still short of time and a single view of customers.

A Bright Ray Of Hope

The need of the hour is a solution with the ability to ingest data from multiple sources, make customer buckets, shoot relevant ads and attribute success to the right advertising mediums. One platform to do all that!

A unified data management solution that provides predictive insights, automates marketing and subsequently feeds on campaign data for further intelligence is your fix! Marketers’ work would be more effective when insights, analytics and ad-dollar spend views appear in on a single window. This digital activation helps marketers innovate based on the intent and interest of target customers resulting in effective ad-dollar spends.

 

 

What Is Big Data Analytics & What’s The Obsession With It?

Big Data Big Hype?

Well no, because we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every single day. And the last 3 years have potentially witnessed the maximum surge in data. New devices, sensors, new technologies stand responsible for this data explosion.

There are over 300 million smartphone users in India alone. Now imagine the data spurted out from all the smart devices, the cloud and other databases? Such variety of data arrive in increasing volumes and with a high velocity given our consumption of digital services. This gives rise to big data. And since it takes data to make confident and productive decisions, it goes without saying that marketers feel slightly overwhelmed. What’s more is that traditional data processing applications fail to process and justly assess such mounting data sets. This makes data-driven marketing go awry.

Bring In The Facts: Analytics

Plus points of data-driven advertising include the ability to reach the most convertible customers right when they’re in need of goods/services. It’s easy said, than done that to achieve this all marketers need to do is gather the data points from across channels that customers frequent and convert it into actionable information. 

Let’s say you’re a business in a B2C situation and you’re looking at driving sales with audience insights. And let’s assume you’re aware of the multiple channels (screens, devices, website and more) that your target audience frequent. So how do you gather the data? Where do you store it? What do you make of it?

Analytics answers the above questions and more that directly power your marketing instincts. For example, in our previous blog we talk about controlling and optimizing data under one roof while still directing you to the coordinates of your future buyers.

Of course, with the reach of technology today, it’s possible to analyze your data and get answers from it almost right away. You can train an in-house resource to do the job or partner with specialist companies to educate you about individual customer needs. With big data analytics, you’ll realize that it is possible to look past the horizons of insight.

UDM: How Data Under One Roof Can Help Marketers See The Future

User data is constantly sprouting in every corner of the web and mobile universe, with every passing second. We see ad tech companies, brands, ad networks and exchanges and every middleman scampering about in an attempt to collect that knowledge from each of its sources. But in this hunt for extracting valuable information from oceans of data every day, there lies a big gap between connecting nameless/faceless digits provided by Data Management Platforms (DMPs) to the more tangible, yet minuscule number of known IDs that come in through Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).

That’s the challenge that we at BPRISE have worked to solve.

Not Just DMP, But Holistic Data Management

When advertisers buy media across a vast range of different sites and through various middlemen, including DSPs, ad networks and exchanges, DMPs typically tie all that activity and subsequent audience data together in one, centralized location. This is used to help optimize future media buys and improve target practice when a client wants to reach a certain filtered demographic. But what the DMPs provide is only 3rd party information that’s ripe for the taking for you and your competitors going after the same customer(s). They don’t provide you with unique identifiers and definite readings of your prospective buyers. You need to knock on a CDP’s door for that.

Or you could just ring our doorbell instead, to cover both sides of the spectrum. We at BPRISE have devised our own system that marries the expansive reach and global access of DMPs with the precision and pointed knowledge of CDPs. We call it UDMP-Unified Data Management Platform. Since we trace your customers even when they travel outside of your website/app framework onto other 3rd party territories, with our UDMP, we are able to connect this first-hand CDP data with information from 3rd party apps and websites (information that has already been analysed by DMPs). This is a more durable and privacy-led connector between known and unknown ID types. So, everything from transaction data, demographic data, and virtually infinite amounts of behavioural data all churn away under our UDMP warehouse.

Thanks to UDMP behaving as a superset of data from DMPs and CDPs, we are able to provide a consolidated view of your customers’ interests and better predict future behaviours, consumer paths and motivations. Since we bridge the gap between DMPs and CDPs and manage the relationship between the ‘general’ mass of data points and known facts about uniquely identified consumer profiles, we have the power to enrich email lists and retargeting campaigns with anonymous DMP attributes to drive performance in known channels.

UDMP. More Juice, Less Faff.

By building this UDMP we can help our clients to better understand customer information and do it with major operational efficiency. Every data point is enriched and made sense of in a way that ensures minimal waste of key information and full use of the cost that went into acquiring that data.

UDM provides you with a data-set of your actual audience which can be activated across an entire life cycle: acquisition, engagement, conversion, and retention. There aren’t restrictions on the types of data you can collect, the segmentation is real-time, and it is channel agnostic to ensure the seamless flow of data. This flexibility arms brands and advertisers with an ability to really explore more possibilities and methods to engage with their user bases.

Controlling such vast amounts and types of data all under one roof also allows us to come to more accurate conclusions, at a faster rate. This in turn feeds into optimisation campaigns and switching strategies to capitalise on emerging trends. By unifying the DMP and CDP universes, at BPRISE we constantly refine lookalike models and present our clients with not just the 411 about their existing customers, but also point them to the coordinates of their future buyers and patrons as well.

So, we’re saying, instead of employing the services of multiple middlemen entities to gather information about the same target audience, give us a call. With our Unified Data Management Platform, we warehouse all the data pouring in from numerous locations and hand it to you in a way that makes sense. If you believe that Data is the new currency, then know that UDMP functions as a big bank. Start your account with us today!

Data To Solve The “Customer Profile” Jigsaw

Delusions Courtesy Multiple Data Platforms

Before we talk about data, let’s talk about all the technology vendors who promise to provide a “360-degree view of customers”. Players in this segment include CDP, DMP and CRM software providers. Which one’s really fit for you?

Would you deploy an array of such software platforms to identify a channel you’d rather invest in to drive sales, promote your brand or generate leads? Even if you do, it does not clearly pick and show you all of your customer’s interactions with your brand’s campaign across sites and ad platforms.

Driving Sales But Not Customer Engagement?

Although there isn’t a direct link between a sale and a campaign, having your point-of-sale and digital identifiers synced can get you answers with some level of certainty. Digital identifiers include cookies and mobile advertising IDs. If you have a sale done at your store, wouldn’t you want to match it with the digital campaign that influenced the customer to make the purchase?

Some tech partners can help you achieve this by studying the change in foot traffic at your stores. Oftentimes, GPS lat/long data points, WiFi connections, and the data from Bluetooth beacons are measured to attribute sales.

So you have enterprise software vendors and a good number of tech partners but would you claim that you put all this data and the customer’s proximity to your stores to good use?

Disparate Systems Equal Data Silos

Companies resort to matching customer details with hashed email IDs to attribute sales but no one’s sure of its accuracy. Why? Because, conditions apply. You must identify the user across sites and apps. The user must opt in to share his/her location. Your store’s information about still being in business must be mapped across cities. That’s a lot of data and there’s still plenty of sources that house customer information, like:

  • Customer Relationship Management Software
  • Data Management Platforms
  • Customer Data Platforms
  • Transaction Data
  • Customer Forms or other databases

How do you finish the customer jigsaw with pieces of information from all the above sources? Or can you already tell that these sources have a superset that can potentially cure all your data hiccups? Here’s an article if you’re interested in reading a little more about how to use your data efficiently.

Watch this space for the next blog wherein our founder introduces a new concept to have all your data requirements catered to from one place.

 

Marketing: Data The Stepping Stone

In today’s day and age, there is so much content available – written content, video content, marketing content and so forth for the end user. Drawing parallels with marketers, it becomes clear that they have a mounting pile of “data”. Where does all the data come from? CRMs, transaction data, customer data and other databases to name a few.

Does your data provide you with adequate insight to answer all your questions related to marketing? Well, one easy way to identify an issue is when you know there’s an element in your equation that just doesn’t add up. Too much data, too many graphs with complicated text is often hard to comprehend. As advertisers you need to be able to understand the data you have at hand in a quick and effortless manner! You’d then be able to predict the consumer needs of your target audiences.

Data analyses equip marketing and sales to construct their respective plans that are in line with the organization’s goal. If you are an advertiser, here are a few pointers to help you mediate and use your data more efficiently:

  1. Profile data: The practice of data profiling helps you comprehend the first-party, second-party, and third-party data; wherein, you identify the missing links and incorrect entries listed within the data set. This promises quality data collection while assuring its relevance to your target audience.
  2. Standardize: Standardizing data across channels enables you to establish an intelligent customer database. For marketers in an organization to know what to measure and how to measure it, it is important to set standards. Start with the external sources or with the internal data your currently own.
  3. Maintain consistency – Data can be interpreted differently by people and even computer systems, for example, if an individual were to list his employer as Tata, when filling out a form to download a white paper, the system might not recognize it since it is only familiar with TCS. Therefore, it is important to have standards set and to record the data in a manner, that is recognized universally. One such example is how dates need to be recorded, whether in the format of dd/mm/yy or mm/dd/yy.
  4. Treat data silos: The information from the various regional offices, departments and different communication channels of an organization contribute to growing amounts of data. Irrelevance or inconsistency in data, can lead to miscommunication or confusion even within the organization. It is therefore vital that you have processes, guidelines and technologies in place to make sure that the branches, and teams sharing data work effectively together.

What if one software could collect, organize, administer, analyze, conduct data quality checks and recognize the trends within the acquired consumer database? It is about time that marketers’ jobs are made a little bit easier by breaking information silos and giving them a leg up with clarity and easy access to the right resource. The result will mean more time for you to get the creativity flowing to boost your brand’s presence.

 

 

Insightful DMPs To Tackle Ad Blindness For Publishers

“I’ll meet you near Jumbo King.” I say and hang up, as I half-run and half-walk up the stairs, for the metro. And for the first time in a long time, I scan hoardings and advertisements at the station. Funnily, all the words on the sign boards looked like a slur to me, because all I cared was for “Jumbo King”. 

It’s no shocker that it’s raining information and data everywhere you go – whether a metro station, a website or even a mobile app. And as a conservative shopper and a digital-first consumer of today, I’m hardly ever enthralled by hoardings or digital adverts. Unless of course the ads are relevant to me.

I must however give it up for all the random brands that seem to target me with digital ads on apps that I use and websites that I visit often. I say “seem” because I should not have ideally been targeted. Why? Because I’m highly capable of going blind to certain ads that are not significant to me. So psychology describes selective attention as the ability to react selectively when multiple things occur at the same time. See, what I’m trying to say? People are rarely attentive to ads that don’t address their current “consumer” problems. And when app users or website visitors go blind to ads, those are lost impressions for advertisers/marketers.

Here’s what makes a user go blind to digital ads:

Timing: I’m on a mobile dictionary app at 11:30 PM, looking up “lackadaisical”. And a pop-up ad of a local mart seizes my screen. Why! I wonder. Like, why trigger that ad then? 

Solution: I’d prefer being targeted by a local mart when I’m on an ecommerce site looking up products that the mart offers too. Oh and, for a dictionary app, shouldn’t you know me any better? Show me ads of books I should buy or read and certainly not of local marts and certainly not when I’m working on my etymology game.

Location: I’m on my way to work, hungrily consuming all of the content Instagram has brought up on my news feed. And there I see sponsored content of an illustrator (I’m talking about a human illustrator and not the software). And I wonder why the illustrator guy targeted me at that hour? Is there no research done before adding me to your “preferred audience segment” for targeting? 

Solution: If an illustrator or an artist wants to target me, show me your stuff when I search for “things to do on a weekend”. Invite me over for a workshop. How about that for a preference?

Intention: I need a pair of high-tops, I search for my all time fave black Chucks at malls. I visit ecommerce websites and apps looking for “black converse”. But somehow, I still have a lot of random fashion ads shown to me when I’m on Tinder. And not those of the product I’m genuinely interested in. Why?

Solution: Dear Converse, I need you! Reach out to me. I’m a social person and I’m open to meeting ads of the high-tops you sell on mobile apps!

Conclusion: Just as there is a need to advertise, there is also a need to personalize and humanize the ads shown to today’s consumers (like you and I).

It is evident that a lot of advertisers and media buyers want to create a “top of mind awareness” for their brands given the rising importance of advertising.

However, consumers like us are sure to appreciate humanized ads and content. Ad publishers need to equip themselves with insights and data to serve their audience relevant content and ads that plausibly address their real-life consumer needs. This is essentially why a Data Management Platform (DMP) becomes the trusted confidant of an established publisher.

What is a Data Management Platform (DMP)?

A Data Management Platform or a DMP is a piece of software that gathers, organizes, stores and pumps out information to benefit marketers and publishers. In human language, it can be defined as the single, easy solution to all data related problems. Today in advertising the lines between a Demand-Side Platform (DSP) and a DMP are beginning to blur because a lot of the DSP providers offer their clients DMP features.

So How Does A DMP Benefit A Publisher? 

Audience Monetization & Inventory Monetization:

Understanding your audience and segmenting of the same helps the publisher build ad packages based on features like shopping intent, business profiles and location data. This in turn helps advertisers and buyers discover pockets of audience who truly need their products or services. 

Publishers also get to effectively segment their inventories (premium and remnant) and achieve a rule-based control to define audiences to distribute ads to ad exchanges, SSPs, DSPs, networks, and agencies.

With the DMP, traffic monetization becomes easy for publishers as the audience insights permit them to sell behaviourally targeted placements on remnant and premium inventories for higher eCPMs.

Audience Analytics & Audience Segmentation:

For starters, DMPs, help publishers gather first party data and third-party data. This means publishers get insights from people’s interactions with mobile apps, websites, social media, email, search, and the various forms of digital ad campaigns. 

The abundance of data can be segmented and organized based on actions, demographics and interests of the publisher’s audience. With the roll up of relevant audience segments, publishers get to respond to advertisers’ RFPs with ready “custom audience segments”. 

Humanized Marketing & Personalized Advertising:

A DMP helps the publisher understand its audience better. Imagine being able to match an individual with an ad of a product on your website/app (if you’re a publisher). When ads and content become relevant to people, in other words when ads talk about the real-time, real-life “consumer” needs of an individual, it immediately catches their eye and perhaps earn clicks too. Insights give publishers a leg up to serve their audience with engaging content and relevant ads.

What To Look For In A DMP?

Data portability: The DMP must offer a media-agnostic portability of data to give publisher all the power to control and analyze cross-channel and cross-media data. 

Easy integration: The DMP should permit an easy integration of the publisher’s first party data into ad servers and SSPs.

Platform reliability: The DMP should allow a publisher to understand how specific audiences interact across multiple digital properties, and generate reports showing the data attributes associated specific audiences.

Quick Overview Of The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)

What Does GDPR Stand For?

It stands for General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR hereon).

What Does GDPR Mean Or Do?

It replaces the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC by the European Union. The GDPR was designed to make the data privacy laws across EU member states uniform, to protect the personal data of every citizen in the EU, mainly to give citizens a control over who gets access to their personal data and to rework* organizations’ approaches with regard to data privacy.

The GDPR aims to protect EU citizens from data and privacy breaches and also gives them back the right over their personal data. All organizations serving the EU citizens must comply with this mandatory directive. It means that companies will have to change* the way they handle their clients’ information like names, photos, email IDs, bank details, social media posts, medical information, or IP addresses which constitute their “personal data”.

A few definitions taken directly from the Regulation

Personal Data definition

‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;

Processing definition

‘processing’ means any operation or set of operations which is performed on personal data or on sets of personal data, whether or not by automated means, such as collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction;

Restriction Of Processing definition

‘restriction of processing’ means the marking of stored personal data with the aim of limiting their processing in the future;

Profiling definition

‘profiling’ means any form of automated processing of personal data consisting of the use of personal data to evaluate certain personal aspects relating to a natural person, in particular to analyse or predict aspects concerning that natural person’s performance at work, economic situation, health, personal preferences, interests, reliability, behaviour, location or movements;

Pseudonymisation definition

‘pseudonymisation’ means the processing of personal data in such a manner that the personal data can no longer be attributed to a specific data subject without the use of additional information, provided that such additional information is kept separately and is subject to technical and organisational measures to ensure that the personal data are not attributed to an identified or identifiable natural person;

Filing System definition

‘filing system’ means any structured set of personal data which are accessible according to specific criteria, whether centralised, decentralised or dispersed on a functional or geographical basis;

Controller definition

‘controller’ means the natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which, alone or jointly with others, determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data; where the purposes and means of such processing are determined by Union or Member State law, the controller or the specific criteria for its nomination may be provided for by Union or Member State law;

Processor definition

processor’ means a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which processes personal data on behalf of the controller; (9)

Recipient definition

‘recipient’ means a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or another body, to which the personal data are disclosed, whether a third party or not. However, public authorities which may receive personal data in the
framework of a particular inquiry in accordance with Union or Member State law shall not be regarded as recipients; the processing of those data by those public authorities shall be in compliance with the applicable data protection rules according to the purposes of the processing;

Third Party definition

‘third party’ means a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or body other than the data subject, controller, processor and persons who, under the direct authority of the controller or processor, are authorised to process personal data;

Consent definition

‘consent’ of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her;

Personal Data Breach definition

‘personal data breach’ means a breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, personal data transmitted, stored or otherwise processed;

Genetic Data definition

‘genetic data’ means personal data relating to the inherited or acquired genetic characteristics of a natural person which give unique information about the physiology or the health of that natural person and which result, in particular, from an analysis of a biological sample from the natural person in question;

Biometric Data definition

‘biometric data’ means personal data resulting from specific technical processing relating to the physical, physiological or behavioural characteristics of a natural person, which allow or confirm the unique identification of that natural person, such as facial images or dactyloscopic data;

Data Concerning Health definition

‘data concerning health’ means personal data related to the physical or mental health of a natural person, including the provision of health care services, which reveal information about his or her health status;

Main Establishment definition

‘main establishment’ means:

(a)as regards a controller with establishments in more than one Member State, the place of its central administration in the Union, unless the decisions on the purposes and means of the processing of personal data are taken in another establishment of the controller in the Union and the latter establishment has the power to have such decisions implemented, in which case the establishment having taken such decisions is to be considered to be the main establishment;

(b)as regards a processor with establishments in more than one Member State, the place of its central administration in the Union, or, if the processor has no central administration in the Union, the establishment of the processor in the Union where the main processing activities in the context of the activities of an establishment of the processor take place to the extent that the processor is subject to specific obligations under this Regulation;

Representative definition

‘representative’ means a natural or legal person established in the Union who, designated by the controller or processor in writing pursuant to Article 27, represents the controller or processor with regard to their respective obligations under this Regulation;

Enterprise definition

‘enterprise’ means a natural or legal person engaged in an economic activity, irrespective of its legal form, including partnerships or associations regularly engaged in an economic activity;

Group Of Undertakings definition

‘group of undertakings’ means a controlling undertaking and its controlled undertakings;

Binding Corporate Rules definition

‘binding corporate rules’ means personal data protection policies which are adhered to by a controller or processor established on the territory of a Member State for transfers or a set of transfers of personal data to a controller or processor in one or more third countries within a group of undertakings, or group of enterprises engaged in a joint economic activity;

Supervisory Authority definition

‘supervisory authority’ means an independent public authority which is established by a Member State pursuant to Article 51;

Supervisory Authority Concerned definition

‘supervisory authority concerned’ means a supervisory authority which is concerned by the processing of personal data because: (a) the controller or processor is established on the territory of the Member State of that supervisory authority; (b) data subjects residing in the Member State of that supervisory authority are substantially affected or likely to be substantially affected by the processing; or (c) a complaint has been lodged with that supervisory authority;

Cross-Border Processing definition

‘cross-border processing’ means either: (a) processing of personal data which takes place in the context of the activities of establishments in more than one Member State of a controller or processor in the Union where the controller or processor is established in more than one Member State; or (b) processing of personal data which takes place in the context of the activities of a single establishment of a controller or processor in the Union but which substantially affects or is likely to substantially affect data subjects in more than one Member State.

Relevant and Reasoned Objection definition

‘relevant and reasoned objection’ means an objection to a draft decision as to whether there is an infringement of this Regulation, or whether envisaged action in relation to the controller or processor complies with this Regulation, which clearly demonstrates the significance of the risks posed by the draft decision as regards the fundamental rights and freedoms of data subjects and, where applicable, the free flow of personal data within the Union;

Information Society Service definition

‘information society service’ means a service as defined in point (b) of Article 1(1) of Directive (EU) 2015/1535 of the European Parliament and of the Council (1);

International Organisation definition

‘international organisation’ means an organisation and its subordinate bodies governed by public international law, or any other body which is set up by, or on the basis of, an agreement between two or more countries.

When Does The GDPR Come Into Force?

GDPR will come into force on the 20th day post its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.

The GPPR will take effect on May 25, 2018 after the two year transition since its approval and adoption by the European Union Parliament on April 14, 2016.

Whom Does The GDPR Affect?

Any company serving the EU citizens must comply with the GDPR directives. Whether an EU company or a non-EU company that deals with “controlling” or “processing” data of the EU data subjects must adhere to the implications of the GDPR. So if you’re based here in India and conducting any of the aforementioned with the personal data of the concerned natural persons; beware.

What If You Fail To Adhere To GDPR? or What Are The Penalties?

Organizations that do not comply with the GDPR directives by May 25th, 2018, could face penalties and be fined up to €20 million ($24 million) or 4% of global annual revenue, whichever is greater.

*What Measures Must Advertisers & Publishers Take?

An upside to the programmatic world in the GDPR era will be the trust factor between customers and brands; this is solely because customers will get to choose whom to share their personal data with, in promise of specific services. Advertisers and publishers have always had their way, because customers could only choose to “opt-out” of receiving specific ad notifications etc. But with the GDPR in place next year, ads targeting EU citizens will have to first get their consent i.e. wait for the target audience to “opt-in” for receiving various notifications/deals from the advertisers or publishers. 

How Does GDPR Affect Ad-Tech Companies?

Ad tech companies and other organizations like email service providers, CRM partners, eCommerce systems, circulation fulfillment companies must comply with the way they  gather, process, store and protect EU citizens’ personal data. First and foremost step will be to make sure the advertisers or publishers are GDPR compliant. It is  critical that the ad tech companies to explain to their respective customers, how their data will be tracked and the benefits that they will avail upon doing so and lastly they must also be informed that they can chose to have their “personal data” deleted from databases as well. This is the “right to be forgotten rule”. Should a user wish to have his/her personal data erased from the database, it must be granted.

What Are The Rights Of The EU Citizens (i.e. “data subjects”) Once GDPR Comes To Effect?

Breach Notification

In case of a breach, the controller must without undue delay inform the supervisory authority about the personal data breach in less than 72 hours after having become aware of it unless the breach is not likely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons (i.e. data subjects).

Right to Access

Data subjects can obtain confirmation from the data controller if their personal data is being processed, if so, where is it being processed and for what purpose.

Right to be Forgotten/Data Erasure

Data subjects can have the data controlled erase his/her personal data, stop any further dissemination of data and even cease third parties from processing the data.

Data Portability

Data subjects can receive personal data concerning them which they have provided to the controller in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable and interoperable format. Where it is technically feasible, the data subject should have the right to transmit personal data from one controller to another.

Privacy by Design

By default data protection must be included right from the onset of the designing of systems, rather than an addition later.

References: –

ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/reform/files/regulation_oj_en.pdf

Why Is It Important To Know Your Customers Better?

“I should probably get these shoes…” I think to myself as I stare at those glorious-looking sports shoes in an online advert. And funny enough I wasn’t even browsing for these. In fact, I was reading about “how to prepare for a mini-marathon in 30 days”.

I had read that you first need to find your stride before making the leap when you start out with the training. Although your mind might say push it, your body will sort of want you to stop and stare…and breathe!

Secondly, you’re supposed to stay sober and strive even harder to stay in on Friday nights. Bless the will-power! And beat this, you’re supposed to say no to friends who insist on splurging and downing glasses of *insert the name of your favourite beverage here* unless they’re out there every morning training with you. So long as they’re not motivating you out there on the field, you’re staying home and making a playlist to keep you pumped on the day of the run.

Thirdly, you’re supposed to pick the right running gear, be it your clothes (these must be weather-appropriate) and your shoes (one must never run in a new pair of shoes, big no-no).

And the fourth point to remember for the marathon week is that you must get good rest, take ice baths, fill yourself up with carbs and keep yourself hydrated!

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I had clicked on the third point when the ad of the sports shoes showed up taking me by surprise! I’ll admit that I have been shoe-gazing on numerous websites for a couple of weeks now – my current ones are old and need to be discarded with all due respect, for good. So, you can imagine what happened next? I caved. I gave in and bought the best running shoes on the planet at a discount which was such a steal I could probably buy two on a whim. Good thing is that my account does not permit all my “whims” from taking over my life. So, that’s sorted.

Know what else was sorted, because of the ad? The discomfort when running in my old pair and the fact that I didn’t have to go trying a zillion sports shoes at stores. In fact, I got the exact pair I had my eye on ever since the background score of the video ad (for the same shoes) had caught my attention. I always knew that adverts had to be creative and catchy, but ads today are so much more dynamic and personal. It’s almost as if they know my precise problem as a customer and address that in the most appropriate way possible. Brands/companies should know me well enough and their ads must be timed correctly to make me want to buy what they’re selling instantaneously!

“In 2017, take a holistic view of the customer journey and create a range of assets that matches the right ad to the right moment.” says Google

Customer insights can benefit brands in critical ways if used prudently. Even if it is one of the brands I ardently follow, for them to make me a paying patron, they will have to go the extra mile and get to know me better. No generic ad or fully-stocked shelves will entice consumers anymore. Today, my options as a consumer are plenty and I am not going to stick around for long if a brand does not “get me”. I’m fickle and I know it, so should brands/companies that want to sell. Brands must gather customer information, analyze it and inform its marketing and advertising teams about the customers’ needs and likes.

Google says that within 15 minutes of waking up, over 68% of smartphones users check their phones. And I most definitely am one of them! This means that smartphone users are one swipe or click away from ditching a brand and browsing on another brand’s website/app. The advancement of “digital” in everything around us, has opened a multitude of options for consumers today. Consumers will not restrict themselves to brands that “treat them like everyone else”. They want to feel “special” and appreciate “tailor-made” offers and discounts by coming back to brands that understand them well.

Customer insights can help brands/companies market to specific demographics thereby saving big bucks. Ad budgets can be focused on specific groups of people rather than having a big-budgeted generic advert plan for the whole country. Targeting a well-researched crowd to market to will mean that the crowd will include individuals who are most likely to convert. Imagine the CFO’s joy when the brand marketer comes back saying “Hey, the ad’s a hit and we saved some!”

Imagine the CFO’s joy when the brand marketer comes back saying “Hey, the ad’s a hit and we saved some!”

Brands and companies must note that today’s ever-evolving customer mindsets want exclusive services. Customers today also want what they want right when they want! Although this does not mean that I will stop watching videos online to take myself over to a brand’s website/app just because I remembered something that I needed. On the other hand, if I see a cool ad pop up exactly when I’m looking up something related, I’ll give in. And something tells me that many other consumers like me will appreciate the efforts taken by brands/companies to get to know them better.

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Understand your end users with help of the customer intelligence engines that BPRISE deploys on your mobile and web applications. Generate long-term profitable results and learn what motivates customers to swipe their cards for your personalized recommendations. If you wish to gather relevant customer insights and get down to the nitty-gritty of what influences their purchase decisions, connect with BPRISE today!

 

Apache Spark and Storm. There is no war here.

spark vs storm

Usually its the war of the giants. With Spark running in micro batches and Storm able to process streams real-time.

At BPRISE, we found both of them can co-exist beautifully in our ecosystem. Each of the Apache systems have matured in their own fields. While Spark has added quite a bit of depth to perform stream analysis, it’s still not up to the mark like Apache Storm.

As I write this post, we are well on our way to analyze over 1.5 billion points of data annually. This required architectural thinking to ensure that we are future proof.

Of course, we have done our flip flop with technology over the previous few months, with experiments that are awaiting migration. We also know what is the next best tool to analyze data, something better than Spark and Storm. But product maturity and support hinders adoption of what is the latest in the field.

How would Apache Spark help us?

Coupled with Microsoft Azure and HDInsight, we are able to scale the solution in a geo-redundant manner in-country and globally. Very critical aspects to begin with. Of course, one can use Amazon or Google for the same purpose – both are great cloud providers. The reason we went with Azure was because Microsoft was the first to support our endeavor in our effort to build our solution with the Bizspark program. And yes, azure is very good.

The biggest challenge Spark would help us with, is handling petabytes of data tomorrow on standard hardware. Processing information across clusters to build answers fast.

And Apache Storm?

There are customers at stores at all point in time across client stores and around the globe. We cannot just rely on historical data to provide solutions. Depending on the age of the data already in hand, real-time data plays a major role in defining the right strategy. Imagine if I knew historically you were interested in Home Theater systems. Will it help if I send a message with an offer today, when you enter the store? Or should real-time information be brought into the mix? What if you are purchasing a television? Does the Home Theater go with it? What if you didn’t purchase the Television today? Can we combine a good offer on Television and Home Theater systems and send something relevant? One would argue this can be achieved with Spark. But the game changes when you take the solution beyond in-app notifications. Without moving into the specifics of the breadth of our solution, I can safely say that Storm has a major role to play when latency and real-time streaming analysis makes or breaks our entire efforts.

The Challenges we see going forward?

  1. Real-time analysis also needs to deal with a lot of noise that skews data. Hence the analysis needs the application of filters (again in real-time) to smooth the data and de-noise it.
  2. Spark and Storm either favors data scientists who can use languages such as Python or R with a host of pre-built libraries or Java Developers. But not both. This places challenges with respect to visual designing and actual analysis. At the end of the day, the customer should be able to use this data meaningfully for actionable insights.
  3. Monitoring systems are stuck in old times. It is almost impossible to monitor the systems real time for performance. It is as if the many contributors to the Hadoop ecosystem deliberately kept this feature out to favor the companies that provide Hadoop as a service. While we are not against any such company, this places additional burden on startups.

If you are a Hadoop know-it-all, well experienced, a problem solver and live in Mumbai. Then we are looking for you. Contact us via this link.