Listen to your customers: Thursday’s daily brief

MarTech’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s digital marketing leader. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.

Good morning, Marketers, and are you listening to your customers?

I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but the current moment feels in many ways stranger than the many months which preceded it. I guess I just got used to being holed up most of the time, seeing few people outside my immediate family, and in controlled settings -— and for a very long time really having nothing to do outside the house.

Now here I am booking air travel and a hotel, and thinking about what I need to pack. I’ve done some indoor dining, and I’m making plans to see friends. And it all seems kind of unreal. Everyone will have a different reaction, of course, but the point I’m making is that your customers are changing too. And what makes this an exciting but also nerve-wracking moment is that they probably don’t know how they’re changing or how long the changes will last.

This means, of course, neither do you. Now is the time to be listening very closely to your customers as they figure out their new lives.

Kim Davis

Editorial Director

The Trade Desk launches Solimar, a DSP for the open internet

In a significant speech yesterday, to a live audience of industry peers (as well as a virtual audience), Jeff Green, founder and CEO of The Trade Desk delivered an impassioned defense of the open internet and a critique of walled gardens. The occasion was the launch of Solimar, The Trade Desk’s new DSP, built on the foundation of its universal identifier, Unified ID 2.0, under construction for the last 18 months.

The moment we are in now — the digital acceleration caused by the pandemic, the flourishing of new channels, the slow death of cookies — will define the future of the internet, Green said. “It’s up to those of us who are committed to the open internet to really take advantage of this moment.”

The new trading platform. Solimar focuses on data security; the need for marketers to show ROI; the need to serve a wide range of channels, including CTV; and the challenge of resolving user identities. Among the main features announced today are:

• Secure onboard ramps for advertisers’ first-party data (including triple-encrypting in some jurisdictions);
• An extensive measurement marketplace that delivers real-time metrics to support campaign optimization (Green drew the contrast with the walled gardens’ secrecy around measurement);
• An advanced business goal-setting capability that enables real-time adjustment of goals based on recommendations from KOA, The Trade Desk’s AI engine; and
• An improved and simplified user experience (an interface, Green said, that seeks to sustain a “dialogue” with the user).

Why we care. Everyone in the industry, and everyone writing about marketing and martech, is talking about what’s coming when Google goes walled-garden with FLoC and tries to carve up global advertising between itself and Facebook.

This was an occasion for a thought-leader in the industry to stand up — literally in front of a live audience, too — and talk about what the loss of an open internet would entail. Green rose to the occasion (although questions do remain to be answered about whether solutions like Unified ID 2.0 can really allow advertisers to reach relevant audiences at scale).

How using the ICE Model for prioritization can sharpen your strategy skills  

MOPs professionals need to show strategic thinking when dealing with executives and other senior stakeholders. This can rather difficult as many practitioners are in the weeds of drip campaigns, website configurations, pixels, etc., which are all very tactical.

Consider using the ICE Model for project prioritization in order to show strategic vision. In his latest contribution to MarTech, Steve Petersen breaks down ICE (Impact, Confidence and Ease) and shows its advantages and limitations. 

“The model’s simplicity seems like one of its greatest strengths.  Executives and other senior leaders have a lot going on and don’t have the time or need for anything other than high-level information.  Simply presenting ICE scoring for numerous initiatives – or a project one is proposing – is a quick and easy way to help make decisions.” 

Be aware, though, that the model requires many assumptions, and is best suited to situations where there is a single, clear business goal.

Read more here. 

What matters in Workato’s latest product updates  

Workato’s latest product updates focus heavily on partner connectors. Partners can also now use profiles to showcase their work. There’s a new connector for revenue intelligence platform Gong, and a connector which offers a way for businesses to finally transition from legacy SAP platforms to SAP S/4 HANA. There’s also a connector to Segment, a CDP which collects, cleans and controls customer data.

Also, as extra aids to Workato users, it’s now possible to stream job history and user activity to HTTP-based log service, as well as copy and paste multiple steps, including actions and control statements, across recipes.

Quote of the day

“I think there’s two types of companies in the world. Those that are trying to control the internet and those that are trying to enable it.” Jeff Green, founder and CEO, The Trade Desk