Cannes Lions: Why First-Party Data Still Isn’t Working with Rob McLaughlin, AUDIENCES
Business of MarketingShow Notes
Most brands say they have a first-party data strategy. Far fewer are actually using that data to shape the media they buy. Recorded live at Cannes Lions, John Horsley sits down with Rob McLaughlin, Founder and CEO of AUDIENCES, to explore why so much customer data still fails to make it into media activation and what needs to change. Rob argues that less than 3% of media spend is currently informed by first-party data, creating what he calls the “activation gap”: businesses have the permission, technology and customer intelligence, but still fail to put it to work. They discuss why brands may already have most of the data and technology they need, why chasing a 360-degree customer view can be both unrealistic and intrusive, and why CMOs and CTOs need to work far more closely together. Rob also explains AUDIENCES’ new partnership with Snowflake, how bringing activation capability directly into a company’s existing data infrastructure can remove months of complexity, and why customer data should remain with the organisation it was originally entrusted to. The conversation also goes behind the business, from bootstrapping AUDIENCES and building enterprise-grade software from day one to Rob’s experience founding and exiting Loop Horizon, hiring the right early team and why he remains unapologetically optimistic about entrepreneurship. A conversation about making first-party data genuinely useful, building software businesses from scratch and closing the gap between having customer intelligence and actually doing something with it.
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