This week’s Under the Hood features Lotame’s Commercial Director for Australia and New Zealand, Luke Dickens. When Luke isn’t busy managing client implementation phases here at Lotame, you can find him performing his “Daddy Duties” AS WELL AS racing his 2010 motorbike.
Can you tell us about your position at Lotame?
I am the Commercial Director for Australia and New Zealand and am in charge of bringing new clients and partners on board to use the Lotame DMP. To do this I constantly remain at the forefront of the ad technology world so that I am able to present a Lotame instance that will work for the client I am taking to at that current time. I work very closely with prospective clients when it comes to the initial use cases for the technology, whether the monetization of their data or gaining a deeper knowledge of their own customers.
What does your day to day look like here at Lotame?
An average day at Lotame mainly consists of keeping on top of my emails whether internal or external, working on client requests for information (RFIs) or proposals (RFPs), developing use cases that will allow prospects to get the most out of the platform and meeting clients face to face, either new introductions or meetings to continue DMP talks.
The greatest things about being in my role is that I get to constantly meet people at the forefront of their field. I enjoy discussing new and wonderful ways that companies are looking to use data to enable new business departments or even better, build for the future. Data is now the main focus for the majority of companies, it is the conversation at the board meetings, in the coffee shops and around the water cooler. People want to know more all the time and find ways to harness the vast amounts of information they have and working at Lotame allows us to be one of the first points of call for these people.
What are some key differences between the US and APAC DMP market when it comes to the needs of our clients? Or differences between AUS/NZ/APAC?
There are a number of differences when we compare the US market to the APAC market or more the US and ANZ. Here in ANZ we see clients that are willing to try new things such as publisher consortiums that involve competing publishers to aggregate their data and push it out via an intermediary. In Australia we have had an outdoor media company run with a world first use case utilizing their beacon network and Lotame’s platform and data exchange to develop transient audience profiling. This will allow their clients to gain a richer understanding of the true audience that they are or could be advertising to rather than data pulled via a post code and census.
We are involved in many talks with agencies who are keen to adopt the DMP technology so that they are able to offer clients richer reporting and ensure the ad spend is put to better use. Marketers in the ANZ region have shown not only an interest but a real hunger when it comes to future proofing their business and being open to data aggregation which will allow for an overall more relevant, enjoyable experience for the end user.
When asked why these differences exist in my region I simply respond with population size and attitude. Australia has 25 million people and New Zealand only 4 million yet we have one of the most profitable banks in the world, the only real publisher consortium and an open mind to generally trying new things.
Since you’ve worked with so many clients, what do you think is the key to success with a DMP? What’s the most important thing a company should keep in mind when getting started?
Keep your initial use cases in place and simple. Stay out the weeds and focus on getting the platform implemented correctly. Ensure through the implementation period that there is a nominated project manager and once implemented that there is a key platform owner.
What’s the most creative use case you’ve seen with data?
One of the most creative use cases has to go to Adshel (Part of the APN Group) who have used the Lotame platform since February 2017. They are the largest outdoor media advertising company in ANZ with over 50,000 sites across the region. They allow brands to advertise their wares on billboards, bus shelters, digital screens in train stations, on public transport and shopping centers.
They reach 92% of commuters in both Australia and New Zealand and have partnered with Lotame so that they are able to use their extensive beacon network combined with our 3rd party data and 2nd party from consenting client’s who are also using our platform, to build location based profiles. These site (Location of Adshel product or beacon) profiles will then allow Adshel to have a richer understanding of people moving through or around the area (Within a 50 meter radius).
Unlike companies and products such as Roy Morgan’s Helix Personas or Experian’s Mosaic’s who base their information on static, household or Sensis data, Adshel will be able to offer the first “transient profiles”. Our understanding is that this is the first example globally done in such a way.
They will be able to use the rich data held per site (bus shelter, train station etc) on a time of day basis (example: Morning commuters, lunch time movers etc) to raise or lower advertising charges. In the future, they would be able to start to target dynamic creative on digital screens based on the average profiles with in the location, maybe even on a 1-1 level. They can move online data through to offline, sequential message, create interactions or relevant messages and offers.
On top of their own use, Adshel will also offer clients (either in our platform or outside), to append location data or, location based profile data to their own users. This again has not been seen before on such a rich and granular level.
What is one key thing that you believe sets Lotame a part from our competitors?
Apart from the obvious, people, culture etc; one thing that sets us far apart from the competition is our platforms architecture. Lotame is able to offer clients a multi-tenancy approach; the ability to ingest data from multiple sources and silo them in “child” instances while managing all data at a “parent” level. This is breakthrough for clients as it opens up new revenue stream opportunities, allows data aggregation and segment enrichment and if a client has multiple brands (Such as Unilever), Lotame will enable them to house each in their own silo. This means they can collect data each of them and extract learnings, develop specific campaigns and target relevant consumers.
Tell us something we don’t already know about you.
Ermm…I am a huge petrol head and have been rebuilding the same Aussie V8 for the past 4 years.
What do you do when you’re not working?
I am a dad to two boys who keep me pretty busy but when I am not performing that duty, I race my 2010 Triumph Daytona Supersport motorbike.
