Benchmark Company invited Above Data to participate in a panel discussion for leading sell-side analysts, PEs, investors and corporate execs. This was their first AdTech Virtual Symposium which focused on how AI is disrupting media, marketing, and adtech/martech companies. Mark Zgutowicz, Sr. Research Analyst at Benchmark, moderated the discussion between Bob Lord, President of Horizon Media & Ben Webb where they discussed the critical need for “AI-Ready” data in marketing.
You can catch the full discussion here: “The AI Data Imperative: Preparing Consumer Marketing Data for Maximum ROI.”
The Challenge: Fragmented Data in a Data-Driven World
As Ben highlighted during the panel, consumer data exists in two halves: person identifiers (names, emails) and behaviors (what you buy, content you consume). While significant progress has been made in identity resolution, the “attribute” side of data remains a complex challenge. There’s no common language for brands, products, categories, or genres across different datasets. This fragmentation leads to:
- Suboptimal Decision-Making: Inconsistent labeling means marketers often miss significant portions of relevant data. As Ben explained, a single product like “Mountain Dew Baja Blast” could appear in data as “Mountain Dew,” “Baja Blast,” or even “PepsiCo,” leading to a potential 30-50% loss of valuable insights.
- Wasted Spend: Without truly “AI-Ready” data, marketing efforts can be inefficient, leading to wasted media spend and less accurate targeting.
- Limited Insights: Traditional data approaches often require extensive manual effort from data scientists to extract meaningful insights, slowing down the entire process.
Above Data’s Solution: The AI-Ready Data Layer
At Above Data, we’ve built a “Data Layer” – a semantic layer that leverages a suite of agents, knowledge graphs, and Large Language Models (LLMs) to normalize and enrich fragmented data. Our goal is to transform raw, incoherent data into a unified, AI-ready format.
How We Help Our Customers (Like Horizon Media):
Horizon Media, an Above Data customer, is a prime example of how our technology empowers agencies and brands. Bob Lord emphasized Horizon’s journey to democratize access to their vast data assets, moving from a process that took weeks to one that takes minutes.
- Real-Time Insights: Our data layer processes information multiple times a day, ensuring data is current and accurate. This dynamic approach allows for real-time audience segmentation and campaign optimization.
- Maximized Data Utility: We help companies like Horizon Media maximize the value of their existing data investments. In some cases, we’ve seen a 70-80% increase in data coverage and 40-50% improvement in accuracy for CPG data providers after running their data through our system.
- Beyond Campaigns: With AI-ready data, the questions clients ask evolve from campaign specifics to broader business problems. As Bob noted, clients are now asking questions about competitor insights, churn trends, and even potential retail expansion.
- Open Ecosystem Advantage: In an industry grappling with data debt from legacy systems, Above Data provides a cutting-edge, open ecosystem approach. This allows our partners to continuously integrate best-of-breed innovations and adapt to the rapidly changing AI landscape without being tied to outdated technology.
The Future is AI-Ready
The panel underscored a critical truth: general-purpose AI tools don’t work effectively on complex consumer data. Deep domain expertise, specialized knowledge graphs, and verticalized AI agents are essential. This is where Above Data excels, creating a uniform data layer where agents can communicate across different verticals, unlocking unprecedented power and efficiency.
Companies that get their data house in order with a robust data layer will gain a significant competitive advantage, leading to smoother operations, more data access, better decision-making, and ultimately, happier customers.
Ready to Make Your Data AI-Ready?
If your organization wants to transform fragmented data into a powerful AI asset, contact us at www.abovedata.io to learn more.