In an effort to debunk some of the common misconceptions and blatant deceptions that some of our competitors have been disseminating (either by choice or because they’re misinformed), Lotame has put together this post to set the record straight. After eleven years in the business, we have always remained true to our core: genuine. Having said that, while we know that we have the best technology and service in the DMP space, we have been a little too modest.
Since we are fresh into 2018 and resolutions must be kept, we’d like to let you know that we aren’t going to let these accusations fall under the radar. Instead, we are going to BE BOLD, and give our competitors a little bit of a history lesson on WHAT LOTAME CAN DO with our new blog and video series “Did You Know?”.
So here you have it, the common myths and deceptions and, straight from Lotame, the truth.
Let’s start with the first, and most baffling myth of them all.
MYTH: “Lotame is a ‘First Generation’ DMP and data collected is perishable. If data is not organized into an audience at the time of collection, it cannot be stored, retrieved, or even used.”
REBUTTAL: This claim is patently false, relative to Lotame, and HAS NEVER been true. Any first-party data that our clients bring into the DMP, or any data that Lotame collects for them, can be organized into hierarchies, taxonomies, and audiences to be easily activated through digital media at any future time.
THE FACTS: Lotame has search capabilities built into our Audience Builder to facilitate the organization of data. Even further, we brought to life the technology PRIORITY EXPORT to ensure that profiles are available at the earliest possible moment for targeting, absent the need to wait for a pixel sync-ing event in order to exploit exported data.
MYTH: “Company X has created a frothy market for resale of a seller’s first-party data. This solution acts as a marketplace where oceans of buyers and sellers will integrate and achieve substantial monetization of second-party data. Lotame does not have a comparable solution.”
REBUTTAL: Let’s take a walk down memory lane. On May, 08, 2013, Lotame introduced Crowd Syndicate, a solution for Lotame clients to easily share and receive valuable data with one another. We were, without a doubt, the first to market with a second-party data selling solution.
THE FACTS: Three years later (in early 2016 to be exact), Company X went to market stating that their P2P data-as-a-service offering solution was “an industry first” and that no company had a comparable solution. While it wasn’t until 2016 that Lotame rebranded our second-party data solution to Lotame Syndicate, we were busy during those years focusing our efforts on ensuring that our buyers and sellers had the tools necessary to monetize their assets.
MYTH: “Lotame’s Syndicate solution does not allow for clients to sell their first-party data outside of the DMP.”
REBUTTAL: When Lotame first launched Crowd Syndicate, we did not have a “direct to DSP” offering. In May of 2016, when we relaunched and rebranded Lotame Syndicate, we introduced the “exchange of data within Lotame’s DMP AS WELL as across our partner DSPs”.
THE FACTS: From there, Lotame has actively marketed our Syndicate solution, communicating to our clients and prospects the benefits of utilizing both Syndicate:DMP and Syndicate:Direct. Syndicate:Direct allows a Lotame customer to build a business bundling its first-party data into audiences that are exported to popular activation channels by the seller. Lotame provides all the tools necessary to facilitate the conversation and financial transaction, ensuring the safe and seamless relationship between buyer and seller. Attached you will find a recent blog post titled, “Q&A: Explaining Lotame Syndicate” highlighting the differences and how they may help clients in their marketing efforts.
MYTH: “If you use the Lotame DMP, they will steal your data, dump it into their data exchange, and you won’t be paid for it.”
REBUTTAL: Lotame plays by the rules – we never have, and never will, steal anyone’s data. We enter into contractual agreements with Data Providers who are looking to sell their data within the Lotame Data Exchange. It is not until a contract is signed, that Lotame can place our proprietary Behavior Collection pixel on our client’s page and collect their first-party data to categorize in the Lotame Data Exchange.
THE FACTS: The Lotame Data Exchange data comes from an extensive, global network of publisher partners and offline data partners. The data that populates the exchange consists of both self-declared and demonstrated behavioral data from unique publishers, yielding accurate and scalable demographic, behavioral interest, and social influencer audience segments. If you are a DMP customer, you can buy such data from scores of branded and bulk providers including Infogroup, Experian, and BlueKai at the click of a mouse.
For those of our clients that are interested in learning more about data origins, we do have a dedicated Data Exchange team on staff that help educate individuals on the type of data that is available as well as how to use it. Also, as mentioned above, we offer Lotame Syndicate, our second-party data solution. Because second-party data means buying data directly from the seller, rather than going through a third-party data exchange, buyers have full clarity into the source of data, and sellers have full transparency into who is using their data and why.
MYTH: “Company X is the only DMP that can store data up to 13 months. All other vendors can only store for up to 3 months. “
REBUTTAL: Let’s keep this one short and sweet. As per our privacy policy, we state, “Lotame retains the non-personal user data we collect for all of our products and services for purposes of interest-based advertising for up to thirteen (13) months from the date of its collection.”
THE FACTS: Check out this video for more information on our data collection policies. Or, you can review Lotame’s Privacy Policy. This policy was last updated on April 25, 2017.
We hope that the rebuttals and facts listed above provide some clarity into who Lotame is as a competitor, but more importantly, who we are as a company. Instead of making blatantly inaccurate claims about our competitors, we have stayed true to the things that we find most important: our independence, flexibility & accessibility, scale & quality data, superior support & service, and lastly, our innovative solutions. We are steadfastly committed to our clients’ success with data and the DMP and have consistently remained ahead of market trends, as we’ll continue to do all of 2018.