Marketing data collection

Marketing data collection is another one of those marketing terms that sound simple but can actually be very complex in practice. At root, marketing data collection is simply the collection of data from all your marketing efforts, campaigns, partners, and projects.

Sounds so simple, right?

Ultimately, however, it’s an attempt to unify all your marketing data in a single place.

And that means you need to collect, normalize, and standardize data. You often need to collect it from dozens or even hundreds of sources. You also need to be able to ingest it in almost any form: CSV, databases, ETL, web dashboards, APIs, PDF documents, and more. And you need to do all this while maintaining the highest standards of accuracy, granularity, safety, privacy, and security.

See how it gets more complicated?

One of the main use cases for marketing data collection is to improve and optimize campaigns in order to maximize the ROI and profitability of marketing efforts. In particular, data collection can be used to optimize campaigns through several ways including marketing analytics, cost aggregation, mobile attribution, and ad monetization:

• Marketing analytics: By collecting, normalized, and standardizing data from multiple sources, this enables marketers to analyze marketing data and take a scientific approach to their growth strategy by uncovering optimization opportunities and performance insights. For example, data can be collected from various ad platforms in order to optimize the performance and increase ROAS for each channel.
• Cost aggregation: Another use case of data collection is cost aggregation, which is the process of reconciling marketing spend across various platforms. By having a unified and accurate picture of costs, marketers are able to further optimize their costs and achieve the highest ROI possible.
• Ad monetization: Another example of marketing data collection is ad monetization attribution and analytics. Aggregating revenue from various ad partners helps mobile marketers optimize their monetization efforts and earn more from each user. Specifically, this data helps businesses better allocate ad inventory and maximize sales by comparing the performance of each ad network and ad format on their app or website.

As you can see, each of these examples is focused on optimizing existing marketing campaigns, maximizing the revenue from each monetization partner, and ultimately achieving the highest ROI possible on marketing efforts.

As discussed in our guide to cost aggregation, there are four primary ways that marketers can collect data:

• Direct data connectors: With direct API integrations, data connectors do the heavy lifting for you and automatically sync with your media sources. This method gives you the most accurate and up-to-date data since there’s no possibility for human error.
• Mobile attribution with tracking links: Data can also be collected with tracking link parameters that are appended to each ad or marketing creative. This is a useful method for attribution, although it does have some limitations as it can lead to data discrepancies that require reconciliation.
• Mobile attribution with postbacks: Postbacks are simply URLs called by a marketing measurement SDK or framework. Postbacks inform ad networks, advertisers, and marketing measurement providers that a marketing effort has become a result: a click, an install, a sign-up, or other activity. Singular collects postbacks from all applicable sources, including Apple’s SKAdNetwork framework.
• Manual reconciliation with spreadsheets: Finally, data can always be collected and reconciled manually by exporting it from the media source. This is by far the most time-consuming and can often lead to human error and inaccurate data.

In short, by using direct data connectors for data collection, marketers can be sure their data is accurate and up-to-date, without the need for manual reconciliation. As highlighted in our cost aggregation guide:

To avoid misguided decision-making, you need 100% data completeness and accuracy, period. The only way to achieve this is with method #1, direct connectors to all your media sources.

Singular is unsurpassed in the number and variety of data connectors we offer and marketing/advertising partners we connect with to unify your marketing data and expose a complete view of your performance.