MarTech Interview with Clint Tasset, CEO and Founder at Adswerve

The company has a 9-year history in media, tell us about Adswerve’s beginnings.

Adswerve was born from a team of former DoubleClick employees who know the ins and outs of Google’s Marketing tools. We created Adswerve to help brands and agencies realize the full potential of the Google Marketing Platform. Since then, we have been a trusted and leading Google Marketing Platform partner and provider for close to a decade.

What prompted the acquisition of Analytics Pros?

We acquired Seattle-based Analytics Pros last August to expand our company’s Analytics and Google Cloud offerings and enable our clients to take a data-first approach to their media. Through the collective team of experts at Adswerve, we are now one of the few Google partners that offers expertise across the entire Google Marketing Platform, Analytics and Cloud offerings.

We believe that it’s not just media and data that are better together — our teams are, too. It’s our focus on outstanding client service and true partnerships that set us apart.

Why is it important to bridge Media and Analytics?

We are helping break down silos between Marketing and Analytics, empowering marketers to be smarter and more effective. After working with thousands of marketers over the years, we know that they are sitting on mountains of siloed data — without the access or ability to tap into its full potential.

The key is unlocking this data and activating accurate, trustworthy analytics. It’s really the foundation for more effective media because it starts with a much deeper, richer audience understanding. Through a data-first approach, we can help our clients utilize the Google Marketing Platform to its fullest potential, share solutions, provide customized media strategies — and prove business success.

What does Adswerve look like now as a Service provider?

Adswerve is a team of 200+ Media and Analytics Veterans who believe Smart Marketing is built on data discovery. In April, we completed our official transformation as a data-first company, uniting media and data services for marketers. Following the acquisition, Adswerve is now a leading Google Marketing and Google Cloud Platform Partner and Provider to more than 600 agencies and 200 brands. And we work with agencies, analysts and marketers at all levels — whether that be in the C-suite or in the trenches, we can help them achieve their media goals. Through training and collaboration, we simplify data and strategies into actionable insights for marketers  — ensuring they experience those “aha moments” right alongside us.

• We help agencies expand their capabilities and get the most ROI for their clients and partners through tailored implementation and onboarding, trafficking and campaign builds, campaign management and optimization for Display and Video 360.
• We help analysts break down the silos within their organization to leverage their data to its fullest potential. Whether that be Data Science and BigQuery services, Data Governance or Data and Media Audits for Analytics 360, our team of Data Scientists and Data Engineers can provide the tools, roadmaps, and training needed to prove business success.
• We help marketers augment their staff and Digital Marketing programs with campaign setup and tagging, campaign management and optimization, campaign, and attribution reporting analysis.

What trends are driving the push for data-first companies like Adswerve?

• In-housing as brands are wanting more transparency, visibility, and ownership of their own data
• Consumer privacy, brand safety and things like Apple’s ITP (Intelligent Tracking Prevention), especially ITP2.1, which is underscoring the need for good first-party data
• Understanding the customer journey across all touchpoints is the #1 challenge for today’s marketers

What does your client list comprise of?

We are so fortunate to have worked with thousands of marketers over the course of the last decade and currently have relationships with more than 600 agencies such as Barkley, CK Advertising, Location3 as well as relationships with Fortune 500 companies which include companies such as YMCA, Whole Foods, Toms Shoes, Starbucks, Stich Fix, Yelp, Glassdoor and more.

What are some examples of your customers that you work with? 

Condé Nast partnered with Analytics Pros, part of Adswerve, to navigate a complicated transition from Adobe Analytics to Google Analytics that led to substantial cost savings.

Twiddy & Company, an Outer Banks vacation rental company, leveraged Google Cloud Platform solutions to better analyze visitor data to improve how it identifies, connects with and converts potential customers for its vacation rentals. Following implementations, the company saw a 31 percent year-over-year campaign revenue jump, a 76 percent increase in e-commerce customer conversion rate and a 36 percent yearly campaign increase in customer transactions.

YMCAs across the country are transforming their organizations, driven by the realization that they can do even more for their communities. The YMCA of San Francisco is leading the way from a technology standpoint, providing a data-driven model for others to follow. After evaluating several cloud providers, the organization decided to build a centralized data warehouse on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), bringing together data from fitness centers, daycare and after-school programs, seasonal and weekend camps, swim lessons, and other activities for more informed decision-making.

Retail Business Services, the services company of Ahold Delhaize USA,  was charged with finding a way to better visualize and access data. With pockets of data spread out across different systems, there was no way to provide local brands with a comprehensive look at business results or for them to see where improvements needed to be made. To understand the full story that the local brand data was telling, and to provide the automation and continuity brand marketers needed, Retail Business Services “went all in” on Google Data Studio, partnering with Analytics Pros (an Adswerve Company), they built on-demand digital dashboards to provide the brands with comprehensive overviews of their Marketing activities.

Tell us about your logo and what it means to your new brand.

The mascot and important face that appears alongside our logo comes as an extension of the Analytics Pros brand. The image is that of one of the first great philosophers from Ancient Greece, named Thales. Thales combined his interests in the natural world with an understanding of Science and Data. Instead of just accepting the world as it was, he sought to understand why. He is reported to have been a wise businessman and thoughtful leader.

We chose Thales for our logo not only because he represents history, depth, and authority, but also because of his humanity. He puts a face to what is traditionally defined by charts, graphs, and spreadsheets. He also illustrates how data has been shaping human thought and behavior for millennia.

How important is it for a Marketer today to understand big data Analytics and related intelligence?

It’s extremely important for today’s marketers to understand what possibilities Big Data analytics creates for them. It’s also equally important to drive that understanding and awareness through the entire organization — empowering everyone to make data-driven, educated decisions.

Beyond decision-making, it also enables advanced analysis and activation projects that allow marketers to tie all of their platforms together, which is the key to programmatically delivering the right message at the right time.

And in reality, these Big Data tools and processes are getting ever-closer to the marketer’s hand, with many of the traditional analytical workloads being automated using Machine Learning technology. While traditionally Big Data Analytics made it possible to summarize the behaviors of large groups of people using a macroscopic perspective, today’s tools (i.e. Machine Learning) allow decision making to be done on a more personal level, with microscopic granularity. In short, the analytical role of the marketer is transitioning from finding users in behavioral data to being able to describe — and cater — to users who define themselves by their own behaviors.

Which Marketing analytics that you were using 3-4 years ago are no longer beneficial to Marketing campaigns? Have they been replaced or have they evolved over time?

Many of the tools are still the same, however, they’ve become more advanced and can now be integrated together. For example, the Marketing analytics processes of three or four years ago were focused on being able to accurately identify and describe user behaviors from a thirty-thousand-foot vantage point. Today, we’re able to move that vantage point to the ground level and deliver the right message at the right time that meets specific needs.

True, the traditional methods haven’t been replaced — we still need to summarize large swaths of user behavior and deliver that reporting back to the business. However, as the tools and Machine Learning technologies progress and there are newer ways to implement them (like cross-domain, BigQuery experts, etc.), it’s critical that we foster understanding of these new methods of analysis across the entire organization — especially among key business stakeholders.

Why do Marketing teams fail to truly acclimate to the ever-changing paradigm of Customer Intelligence and User Analytics?

I think Marketing teams have been acclimating — it’s just a very dynamic space that’s frequently changing and constantly growing. One of the biggest challenges for marketers is that there are very few Marketing Tech solutions that integrate with each other. Additionally, investing in one solution often means divesting from another, which creates friction, stifles innovation and has implications for a vast network of stakeholders like agencies, product teams, IT, executives, etc. At Adswerve, we suggest marketers accommodate “crawl/walk/run” implementation lifecycles in order to reduce barriers to entry and encourage innovation throughout the entire organization.

Another challenge we frequently see is that when the tools or philosophies used to measure do change, data models must change, too. And this can lead to inconsistent and inaccurate data. If an organization gets to a place where its data is untrusted, its marketing analytics can come to a screeching halt, driving marketers and organizations to take non-data-centric approaches. This is our biggest priority at Adswerve — understanding a customer’s current environment and implementing solutions that continue to build trust within the organization.

Thank you, Clint! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.