From founding a specialist marketing evaluation and modeling agency to co-founding the Measure.Monks—our data-driven team that builds marketing effectiveness models to help brands deliver more profit—my professional journey can be divided into four milestones: starting, scaling, merging and integrating a business. In this piece, I aim to share my experience (instead of unsolicited advice) with the hope that established and aspiring founders can draw inspiration from it.   

Starting a business 

Looking back, this might have actually been the hardest part of it all. Let’s just say it takes a pretty large leap of faith to go from the comfort of having a salary and holidays to being completely responsible and accountable for your income. People’s common perspective is that you can work when and how you like, but my reality looked quite different. No, I didn’t have a direct boss—but I did have to constantly be on hand for clients to get the business off the ground. In my mind, any day off was a day lost in growth. 

Those early days were testing times, but resilience and hard work got me through them. While resilience is required in taking the bad breaks at the start (which I believe happens to test your mettle), hard work is needed to create more leads to increase your chances of bringing in bigger projects. In hindsight, having a co-founder would’ve helped enormously, but I’ve always been lucky that my wife knows the industry and is incredibly supportive. 

Scaling a business

With more work came more income, and as the team grew, the pressure eased. Upon reflection, I realize how reliant you can be on one client in the early days, which is a very precarious position to be in. If they drop you, your business drops—and this means making tough calls about the team. Fortunately, I could always lean on my advisor and chairman Paul Edwards, who was an invaluable coach, highlighted things I’d overlooked, and helped me manage and expand the team. I’ve found that having an external advisor is not only what kept me sane, but what kept our company’s standards high. In turn, these standards drove our mission, vision and values, which proved key to attracting and retaining talent. 

Merging a business

After years of great growth, we reached the point where we had nurtured an incredible team and built amazing market-leading products. But to truly accelerate our growth, we had to go global—and needed a partner to do so. Avoiding private equity as cash wasn’t the issue, our focus was on access to clients and facilitating global growth. After a lengthy scouting process, we were introduced to Media.Monks. We were immediately blown away by their agility, sheer focus on groundbreaking innovation, and culture of entrepreneurship. Making the merger decision may have been nerve-racking, but we knew we had the support of our people, whom we kept informed along every step of the process.

And what a great decision it was! Our merger was handled superbly by SI Partners, who managed our pitch process and the offers that led to the Letter of Intent, all the way through due diligence, legal and finally signing all the agreements. Having heard horror stories about this process taking up all of the leadership’s time—with a suffering business as the result—I was not looking forward to it, but our M&A partners made it easy to navigate. 

Integrating a business

Wasting no time, Media.Monks quickly initiated integration. Turns out, they are pros at this. As a dedicated Post Merger Integration (PMI) team made everything run smoothly, we immediately felt part of the team. They provided a detailed plan of everything we needed to fall in on, like accounting practices, legal, HR, CRM software, audits and more. However, allowing us to move at our own pace was the real value of the PMI team, which made us feel comfortable in the nearly 12 months it took to fully merge.

On the business side of things, we jumped straight into the global network, sharing our story with any team that would listen, which was met with sincere interest and support. These last few years have led to significant global growth, as we’ve not only gained clients in new markets, but also expanded our Measure.Monks team. At the moment, we have talent located in New York, Toronto, the UK, Buenos Aires, Melbourne and Singapore, and this list will only keep growing. 

While our team folds into the data pillar, we seamlessly work across our media, content and technology pillars. As a result, we regularly venture into new territory, from supporting our agility-focused media teams to running creative measurement and optimization with our content teams to developing new products with our data teams. There’s so much more to be explored, created and delivered—especially given the recent uptake in usage of AI and automation—and that’s why my excitement about this journey never wavers.

What are the core capabilities of this technology? First up, CDPs support data aggregation, giving you a better and more unified view of your (prospective) customers. Second, they help you unify multiple data sources through a single ID manager, thereby facilitating ID resolution and management. Third, CDPs help you understand how customers act on different channels and thus enable you to predict consumer behavior. Finally, CDPs support customer activation. They’re first-party data tools that focus on making sense of different data sources, while executing effortless activation. 

Essentially, CDPs can help you diversify your brand’s targeting strategies and reach audiences at scale, all by leveraging your first-party data. If you ask our Associate Director of Customer Data Elia Niboldi, first-party data is your most valuable asset, not only because it’s durable and exclusive to your company, but also because it will be central to any future targeting strategy—and Customer Data Platforms are here to help you leverage this data. Niboldi sat down with Ian Curd, Global Consumer Data Director at Diageo, Martin Kihn, SVP Strategy, Marketing Cloud at Salesforce, Jackie Rousseau-Anderson, Chief Customer Officer at BlueConic, and Chris Thomson, Account Director, Strategic Finance Accounts at Treasure Data, to talk all things CDPs and why now is the time to dive into this complex technology.

In the latest episode of IMO, Brianna Mersey, Media.Monks Associate Director of Data, sat down with Marc Laurent-Atthalin, VP Data & Digital Media at Reitmans, and Zamira Khamidova, Director of Data North America at Media.Monks, to discuss what it took to shift the traditional retail business into a modern data stack capable of enabling marketing use cases. Throughout the conversation, they shared insight into how to set your data foundation up for success, the importance of aligning stakeholders across the business, and the need for a “test and learn” mindset. If you missed the episode, we’ve got you covered—watch it in full below.

Reitmans was able to adopt such advanced analytic methods because the team had already established a strong foundation of data, making it easy to implement models that were more reactive to customer behavior and transaction histories. Marc and Zamira offered advice on how to select which data sources to start with (opt for rich, actionable data sets that give you lots to work with) and how to ensure that data is clean and reliable.

Marc also shared the importance of aligning with internal stakeholders to gain buy-in and chart the path forward. “It’s important to build a clear vision and strategy initially and communicate it properly, and then use data to build your case,” Marc said. By tying data objectives with business outcomes, his team was able to prioritize use cases and deliver results quickly, then test and iterate from there. For example, building a 360-degree view of the customer provided insights to drive conversion, fulfilling the key business need to propel growth.

When it comes to initiatives like these, treating your partner as an extension of your team is key. “Collaboration is hugely important,” Zamira said. “When it comes to data, there are lots of questions on the context—especially with historical data, so it was important for us to have two-way communication and hear back on any questions we had.” This level of regular communication also helps with further collaboration as the engagement evolves. 

So, where is Reitmans headed next? You’ll have to watch above to find out—including the brand’s plans around Web3, which is set to transform the brand-customer relationship even further. And if you’re eager for more insights from Media.Monks subject matter experts and our partners, mark your calendar for the next episode of IMO later this month.

A little over a decade ago in Paris, the advertising services company Dare.Win was born out of the desire to help brands rise above the noise through daring experiences. Working with both French brands and international companies looking to tap into the local market, the Dare.Win team thrived by leveraging new formats across entertainment—a powerful tool to get audiences emotionally engaged. 

Eleven years after Dare.Win’s founding, the digital ecosystem has evolved beyond measure—fueled by an audience that’s more demanding, and in more control, than ever before. To achieve the agility needed to build brand relevance in today’s digital ecosystem, Media.Monks and Dare.Win combined forces in 2020 to operate at scale with an integrated offering across data, media, content creation, production and more. Now, we’re taking our unified approach to the next level. With a new name that cements a change in dimension, we’re proud to introduce our combined local team, the Paris.Monks.

Experiences imbued with cultural insight. 

Whether developing experiences that are fully virtual, physical or somewhere in between, our job as end-to-end partners is to create meaningful, branded moments that resonate with the target audience. Sounds simple, but here’s the catch: tastes are nuanced, and no two markets are exactly alike. In France, like in every market, brands need to factor in local insights—both to adapt their existing content and to inform future decisions.

During one of Paris’ hottest summers, our experts drew upon the extreme temperature to generate exposure for Get 27, a traditional French apéritif. The experience featured a “fresh street” where locals could cool down in a branded space—giving them what they needed when they needed it. Experiential activations like this thrive on local intuition, which is equally important in every aspect of a brand’s marketing. When it comes to media buying, for instance, brands need to know their publishers and their background. The same happens with influencer marketing. And even after you’ve mastered the cultural component, personal nuances enter the picture.

First-party data fuels personalization.

Even within a specific market and cultural framework, consumer interests can widely vary, which is where the power of data comes into play. We know consumers expect products and experiences to be tailored to their interests and lifestyle, but this level of personalization only comes with a solid first-party data strategy.

How you use data can make or break your relationship with consumers. They want to feel seen, not spied on. No one likes to have a repetitive ad chasing them from platform to platform, or to share all their data before they can even assess how much value a brand can offer them. “Today, consumers expect personalization in a balanced way,” says Charles Moynet, the head of our DDM practice in France. “Tailored to their interests, but not creepy."

Indeed, first-party data should be the fuel that feeds the rest of the supply chain. When capabilities are siloed, the value that the data team extracts rarely informs the work of creative teams, whereas in a unified approach, insights flow seamlessly between them. The goal is never to frantically collect data; rather, to reach a healthy feedback cycle in which users’ data improves the experience and vice versa. 

Local understanding through the bird’s-eye view of a global team.

Cultural insight and a solid first-party data strategy are key ingredients in the recipe for business growth—but above all, the secret sauce is banking on a multicultural team of professionals from all walks of life.

For global brands, having a multicultural partner can help them show up authentically for various audiences. And while having specific cultural insight helps identify opportunities, banking on a global team comes in handy when tapping into multiple markets. A good example of this is how our fashion and luxury capability team, the FLUX.Monks, helped Amazon Fashion Europe build their cred in five different markets: France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the UK. Through a 360-degree campaign spanning content creation, influencer marketing, translation support and more, we established a council where each member represented a key market and gave a humanized feel to the brand’s wide offering.

The importance of an integrated approach stems from the fact that driving desire and relevance within a specific audience means being in touch with the topics, channels, formats and technologies they find alluring. says Liam Osbourne, Our Global Client Partner for FLUX.

Through a group of professionals belonging to a variety of cultures and subcultures, we foster opportunities for innovation—combining the best of all worlds for a well-informed pursuit of relevance. Working from Paris’ backyard and backed by a global team, the Paris.Monks will continue to reinvent marketing and support our partners through a digital-first offering that spans creative content, technology, performance, media buying and everything in between.

Retail media networks are when retailers establish an advertising platform on their own digital platforms—kind of like in-store advertising, but in digital format. This creates a new revenue stream for retailers by monetizing their first-party data through the launch of ad products. Though all of this is conceptually clear—every retailer wants to increase its revenues—the market is still reluctant to implement this solution. Retail companies either rely on selling their products and services rather than tapping into ad monetization, or they lack the right infrastructure and skills to build and run retail media networks. For most retailers, the latter is the issue. Some stick to what they know, whereas others outsource the work.

The Business.Monks—Media.Monks’ business consulting category—focus on uniting strategy with experimentation, value creation with performance, and consulting methodologies with agency crafting. Given the high potential, it’s time to start building your retail media network, here’s why.

5 reasons why retailers should set up their retail media network.

RMN provides a new and very profitable revenue stream. “We’re talking about a new revenue stream with a margin between 60-90%, so it’s huge,” says Cacau Lima, Business Consulting Manager for the Business.Monks in São Paulo. Just look at Amazon Ads—in 2021, it reached over $31b in revenue, which is nearly 5% of Amazon’s total revenue. Additionally, RMN has a huge impact on the bottom line, with Onsite Campaigns yielding up to 90% of EBITDA.  

Advertisers want clear-cut solutions. Digital marketing is all about measuring the impact in sales. Though brands can measure clicks and impressions, the bottom line impact has always been estimated. With RMN, however, advertisers have the ability to measure bottom line conversion and optimize their media spend based on the increase in sales.

This solution is growing really fast. Today, $1 in every $6 is spent on media networks, and in about two years, it is projected to represent 20% of all digital media spend, according to Insider Intelligence. Currently, 82% of CPGs have already invested in Amazon Ads, while only 39% has invested in the second biggest retailer. This shows us that there are huge opportunities to increase investments in RMN. 

It’s all about the data. Since third-party cookies have crumbled, RMN is the sweet treat that both retailers and advertisers need. Through ad monetization with RMN, retailers can gain new insights into their customers’ behavior and interests, elevate their first-party data strategy, and engage audiences by giving relevant recommendations that suit their needs. As for advertisers, they can access the retailer’s precious first-party data and gather important information. 

We’re in the era of Everywhere Commerce. As CX and brand experiences become ever bigger and better, it’s crucial for advertisers to have control over how to engage with their consumers in every digital touchpoint. RMN ultimately creates the space and opportunities for advertisers to do so. On top of that, this business solution is beneficial to retailers, advertisers and consumers alike. “Between brand awareness and conversion, there’s typically a messy middle. RMN creates a one-stop shop, allowing customers to find a brand, get to know its history, and then convert in one go,” says Galera. 

Translating skills into solutions.

“In order to solve complex problems, we need to be able to speak different languages—that of media, social, data, and so on. So, we’ve built a team that can speak all these languages by mixing experts from different professional fields, who together give shape to an unbelievable diversity of mindset and innovative thinking,” says Helena Curado, VP Business Consulting LATAM, Media.Monks. 

To secure future success in this space, businesses—both retailers and brands—need to adapt to the ever-changing landscapes of commerce and consumer behavior, and it’s best to do it sooner than later. Taking the leap can be scary, but just take a look at the numbers—they show it will be worth it.

Typically, brands whose websites aim to provide content rather than serve as an ecommerce platform are well versed in the benefits of ad monetization. After all, it can be the main—if not the only—source of income. But for retail companies whose main business relies on selling their products and services, ad monetization can be relegated to the background.

The truth is that with the right strategy in place, this monetization strategy can bring millions of dollars a year for big retailers. And yet, perceiving it as only a source of additional income is missing out on the other opportunities it presents to brands. Ad monetization can lead to new insights into your customers’ behavior and interests, elevate your first-party data strategy and even engage audiences by giving relevant recommendations that suit their needs. Here are some aspects to factor in as you delineate the optimal strategy. 

First-Party Data Reigns Supreme

The concept of ad monetization is closely tied to automation. When it comes to filling placements—whether in-app or on websites—most brands depend on third-party solutions like demand-side platforms (DSPs) or advertising SDKs. It’s easy to understand why: with little effort from the publisher, they manage everything from real-time bids to supply quality and viewability. The inventory is diverse, and it saves the brand from having to reach individual agreements with different vendors.  

For those reasons, DSPs can be quite profitable. But with increased awareness of the importance of data privacy and the imminent death of the cookie, the benefits of a strategy that relies on one’s first-party data come into sharper focus.

In opting for first-party ad monetizing solutions, brands may find that not only do they provide better results for advertisers but that in return, monetization also helps them learn more about their audience. “Visitors have the option to share with us what they do inside our website—including the ads they clicked on and the ones they chose to ignore,” explains Daniel Diniz, VP of Business Development. “Packed with the right data management platform, brands can draw valuable insights into what they can do to improve each customer’s experience.”

It’s a Win-Win Solution for Publishers and Advertisers

Retailers know—and care for—their consumers better than any external DSP ever will. They are more likely to know what products genuinely interest them, and how to present them without disrupting the experience. For advertisers, this means that establishing direct relationships with them equals higher click and conversion rates. “Applying our insights into what our consumers would be interested in seeing can yield better results for the brands we offer advertising space to,” says Diniz. “While we won’t be sharing the data our consumers trusted us with, they will witness an improvement in performance.”

In that process, it’s only natural for certain advertisers to get better results than others—something that publishers should identify as a source of knowledge. “If the brand you’re promoting is not seeing great results, it may be time to direct your audience to others,” says Diniz. Far from indicating that one’s placement is not valuable, or that ad monetization is not the way to go, a lack of performance simply means your consumers are not that interested in that particular advertiser.

Winning the Fight Against Ad Fatigue

On occasion, retailers worry that monetizing their website will only add to the existing ad fatigue. While this is a real issue, it’s oftentimes caused by the unregulated use of automated tools, as opposed to a personalized, data-driven strategy. As Teixeira explains, “Consumers are in constant pursuit of new recommendations and solutions to their existing needs. When done right, ads don’t have to be a nuisance—quite the opposite. They complement the experience.”

If a consumer is browsing through an ecommerce website, chances are they are already in shopping mode, meaning they are more open to ads—as long as they don’t seem forced. It all boils down to how we’re presenting them. “Showing visitors an ad they’ve seen a million times or a product they bought two days ago will surely leave a negative impression,” adds Teixeira. “Which only reinforces the importance of an ad monetization strategy that’s built on data-driven decision-making. That way, both the publisher and the advertiser can rest assured that the consumer is seeing a reasonable number of ads that match their interests.”

While there are no magic solutions when it comes to ad monetization, one thing is certain: having a dedicated team capable of creating data processing models and acting upon their findings will benefit all parties. There’s a lot to be gained from monetizing one’s website, as long as we’re factoring in the consumers’ preferences as well as the brand’s. “There’s no one-size-fits-all approach,” concludes Diniz. “Many opt for a dual model in which they save the premium placements for the advertisers they’ve established direct relationships with and manage the rest through a DSP, and that’s perfectly fine. It all depends on their ultimate goal.”

In our work, we’ve found that Google Data Studio does an excellent job with both. A free, online tool that transforms public and private data into interactive knowledge, the platform powerfully visualizes data at teams’ fingertips, without betraying security.

Augmenting Data Visualization with Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio helps people comprehend and manage data. Using the platform, you can:

• Identify business trends: Interact with the data in the form of charts, maps, graphs and tables, using popular features like filters and segments.
• Turn budget data into customized reports: A fully functional Business Intelligence (BI) platform with customizable interactive dashboards and reports.
• Assess the performance of your websites and/or business: By connecting website analytics with business data, you can find outliers in performance. 
• Analyze customized data and find useful data points for varied success criteria: Users may manipulate the data to suit their needs, having varying levels of user access.

Furthermore, access permissions can be managed across the whole organization with help from Google Workspace. Dashboard owners can also prevent other users from further sharing a dashboard and limit their options when it comes to downloads or exports to mitigate the risk of unauthorized data sharing. 

However, even though the different access levels and sharing controls are intended to prohibit the wrong people accessing sensitive/personal data, the process of sharing a dashboard or restricting access to one can be difficult to manage at scale. Google’s documented solution to personalize data results proposes using more data sources and using the blending functionality to create many-to-many filters. There are scenarios where this can be feasible (especially when BigQuery is not involved), but it could involve making changes to the data source that would then need updating if permissions changed. 

Managing Complex and Interconnected Data Streams

It’s easy for data to become overwhelming, and when a dashboard is connected to a data source used by multiple people, the dashboard owner wants to ensure that each user only sees the data that is relevant to them. This becomes an especially important requirement if the data in question is considered sensitive. So, how does one factor in this kind of a requirement in a dashboard using pre-existing Data Studio capabilities?

Using an email filter is one way to restrict access to irrelevant or sensitive data. When this feature is in use, Data Studio searches for the user's email address in the column that carries all user email addresses in the data source, and if located, Data Studio will filter and present only the relevant part of the data for that user. This is designed to provide a higher level of restriction around data that directly relates to an individual, known as “row-level data security.” The feature is available for any data source. If the data is in BigQuery, you can filter by the user's email address using the email parameter in a custom query. 

This feature isn’t without caveats, though. By default, the row-level data security function falls short in scenarios when more than one person has access to the same row of data. For example, if we are looking at internal business metrics about an employee in relation to a multilevel organizational structure, there might be an ongoing need for a manager to be able to have access to the data of the employees they manage.

Streamlining Internal Data Sharing

Rather than creating a dashboard using a personalized data source for each employee, then sharing access to this dashboard with others one-by-one, Media.Monks set out to create one dashboard with a data source that contains all required data and shares it in a way that gives access to a group of specified people. The proposed solution is based on BigQuery’s capability to use nested fields, enhanced further by using Google Sheets for simplified access management.

The example below provides maps between owners of business units and managers of varying levels. Thanks to this mapping, a direct manager can access the data of any employees sitting beneath them in the report, as well as a person who sits two layers up in the organizational structure. 

First, it is important to correctly map out who should have access to which part of the data set using a Google Sheet. This might vary depending on the data in question, and should be carefully considered before sharing the final dashboard.

Looking back at the example, ‘Business Unit Name’ was identified as a mapping field between the data source being used and the access management sheet. The ‘BU Owner’ field is used to list all email addresses of people who shall have access to the data. ‘BU Owner’ will become the email field when setting up an email filter. What is particularly interesting about this solution is that any updates to permissions made via the access management sheet will work in real time. 

A few technical steps remain to put the solution together. The access management/permission sheet needs to be linked to BigQuery. Data transformation is also required in order to create a nested field (array) out of the provided email addresses, which is achieved with an SQL function “split”: SELECT bu_name, split(trim(bu_owner), “ , “ ) bu_owner FROM *Insert Data Source*

The result shows each team/Business Unit name, along with the corresponding emails of the users that have access to that team’s data, like this:

The last step here is to join the original data source with the table representing the Google Sheet, then save it either as a view or a table. For more complex queries and situations it is advised to save the results as a table, which improves performance. Some further tweaks may be required to increase performance and leverage BigQuery’s BI engine. 

The logical principle here is that only a single user may access the dashboard at any point in time. The advantage, however, is that when the Business Unit Owner field gets ignored, the data maintains its consistency, as there are no row multiplications. 

The dashboard is then connected to BigQuery’s destination entity. In the Data Studio UI, the owner of the data source must enable the email address filter feature and appoint ‘BU Owner’ as the filtering field. If you need to make changes to who can have access to another person's data, you only need to do so in the access management sheet, as they will be reflected in the connected data source instantly. 

Toward Efficient Practices for Handling Data Internally

Sharing sensitive data with the right people, particularly in a multi-level organization, is a process that should be undertaken with utmost precaution. How people at different levels apply data to the business depends on their attitude to data—ranging from a core driver of the business to a point of annoyance and confusion—underscoring the importance of making data accessible and comprehensible to all who use it. By augmenting data visualization and securely sharing the most relevant data to members of the team, it’s only a matter of time when data becomes the priority. I eagerly wait for that day.