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Which creative studio do you most admire right now, and why? This is a question we asked our community via an ongoing survey. With more than 700 responses so far, these are the top winners. What's striking about this year's results is the popularity of studios that aren't just producing beautiful work but are also actively shaping discussions and tackling the big challenges facing our industry and society. From the vibrant energy of Brazilian culture to the thoughtful minimalism of North European aesthetics, this list reflects a global creative landscape that's more connected, more conscious, and more collaborative than ever before. In short, these studios aren't just following trends; they're setting them. Read on to discover the 25 studios our community is most excited about right now. 1. Porto Rocha Porto Rocha is a New York-based agency that unites strategy and design to create work that evolves with the world we live in. It continues to dominate conversations in 2025, and it's easy to see why. Founders Felipe Rocha and Leo Porto have built something truly special—a studio that not only creates visually stunning work but also actively celebrates and amplifies diverse voices in design. For instance, their recent bold new identity for the São Paulo art museum MASP nods to Brazilian modernist design traditions while reimagining them for a contemporary audience. The rebrand draws heavily on the museum's iconic modernist architecture by Lina Bo Bardi, using a red-and-black colour palette and strong typography to reflect the building's striking visual presence. As we write this article, Porto Rocha just shared a new partnership with Google to reimagine the visual and verbal identity of its revolutionary Gemini AI model. We can't wait to see what they come up with! 2. DixonBaxi Simon Dixon and Aporva Baxi's London powerhouse specialises in creating brand strategies and design systems for "brave businesses" that want to challenge convention, including Hulu, Audible, and the Premier League. The studio had an exceptional start to 2025 by collaborating with Roblox on a brand new design system. At the heart of this major project is the Tilt: a 15-degree shift embedded in the logo that signals momentum, creativity, and anticipation. They've also continued to build their reputation as design thought leaders. At the OFFF Festival 2025, for instance, Simon and Aporva delivered a masterclass on running a successful brand design agency. Their core message centred on the importance of people and designing with intention, even in the face of global challenges. They also highlighted "Super Futures," their program that encourages employees to think freely and positively about brand challenges and audience desires, aiming to reclaim creative liberation. And if that wasn't enough, DixonBaxi has just launched its brand new website, one that's designed to be open in nature. As Simon explains: "It's not a shop window. It's a space to share the thinking and ethos that drive us. You'll find our work, but more importantly, what shapes it. No guff. Just us." 3. Mother Mother is a renowned independent creative agency founded in London and now boasts offices in New York and Los Angeles as well. They've spent 2025 continuing to push the boundaries of what advertising can achieve. And they've made an especially big splash with their latest instalment of KFC's 'Believe' campaign, featuring a surreal and humorous take on KFC's gravy. As we wrote at the time: "Its balance between theatrical grandeur and self-awareness makes the campaign uniquely engaging." 4. Studio Dumbar/DEPT® Based in Rotterdam, Studio Dumbar/DEPT® is widely recognised for its influential work in visual branding and identity, often incorporating creative coding and sound, for clients such as the Dutch Railways, Instagram, and the Van Gogh Museum. In 2025, we've especially admired their work for the Dutch football club Feyenoord, which brings the team under a single, cohesive vision that reflects its energy and prowess. This groundbreaking rebrand, unveiled at the start of May, moves away from nostalgia, instead emphasising the club's "measured ferocity, confidence, and ambition". 5. HONDO Based between Palma de Mallorca, Spain and London, HONDO specialises in branding, editorial, typography and product design. We're particular fans of their rebranding of metal furniture makers Castil, based around clean and versatile designs that highlight Castil's vibrant and customisable products. This new system features a bespoke monospaced typeface and logo design that evokes Castil's adaptability and the precision of its craftsmanship. 6. Smith & Diction Smith & Diction is a small but mighty design and copy studio founded by Mike and Chara Smith in Philadelphia. Born from dreams, late-night chats, and plenty of mistakes, the studio has grown into a creative force known for thoughtful, boundary-pushing branding. Starting out with Mike designing in a tiny apartment while Chara held down a day job, the pair learned the ropes the hard way—and now they're thriving. Recent highlights include their work with Gamma, an AI platform that lets you quickly get ideas out of your head and into a presentation deck or onto a website. Gamma wanted their brand update to feel "VERY fun and a little bit out there" with an AI-first approach. So Smith & Diction worked hard to "put weird to the test" while still developing responsible systems for logo, type and colour. The results, as ever, were exceptional. 7. DNCO DNCO is a London and New York-based creative studio specialising in place branding. They are best known for shaping identities, digital tools, and wayfinding for museums, cultural institutions, and entire neighbourhoods, with clients including the Design Museum, V&A and Transport for London. Recently, DNCO has been making headlines again with its ambitious brand refresh for Dumbo, a New York neighbourhood struggling with misperceptions due to mass tourism. The goal was to highlight Dumbo's unconventional spirit and demonstrate it as "a different side of New York." DNCO preserved the original diagonal logo and introduced a flexible "tape graphic" system, inspired by the neighbourhood's history of inventing the cardboard box, to reflect its ingenuity and reveal new perspectives. The colour palette and typography were chosen to embody Dumbo's industrial and gritty character. 8. Hey Studio Founded by Verònica Fuerte in Barcelona, Spain, Hey Studio is a small, all-female design agency celebrated for its striking use of geometry, bold colour, and playful yet refined visual language. With a focus on branding, illustration, editorial design, and typography, they combine joy with craft to explore issues with heart and purpose. A great example of their impact is their recent branding for Rainbow Wool. This German initiative is transforming wool from gay rams into fashion products to support the LGBT community. As is typical for Hey Studio, the project's identity is vibrant and joyful, utilising bright, curved shapes that will put a smile on everyone's face. 9. Koto Koto is a London-based global branding and digital studio known for co-creation, strategic thinking, expressive design systems, and enduring partnerships. They're well-known in the industry for bringing warmth, optimism and clarity to complex brand challenges. Over the past 18 months, they've undertaken a significant project to refresh Amazon's global brand identity. This extensive undertaking has involved redesigning Amazon's master brand and over 50 of its sub-brands across 15 global markets. Koto's approach, described as "radical coherence", aims to refine and modernize Amazon's most recognizable elements rather than drastically changing them. You can read more about the project here. 10. Robot Food Robot Food is a Leeds-based, brand-first creative studio recognised for its strategic and holistic approach. They're past masters at melding creative ideas with commercial rigour across packaging, brand strategy and campaign design. Recent Robot Food projects have included a bold rebrand for Hip Pop, a soft drinks company specializing in kombucha and alternative sodas. Their goal was to elevate Hip Pop from an indie challenger to a mainstream category leader, moving away from typical health drink aesthetics. The results are visually striking, with black backgrounds prominently featured (a rarity in the health drink aisle), punctuated by vibrant fruit illustrations and flavour-coded colours. Read more about the project here. 11. Saffron Brand Consultants Saffron is an independent global consultancy with offices in London, Madrid, Vienna and Istanbul. With deep expertise in naming, strategy, identity, and design systems, they work with leading public and private-sector clients to develop confident, culturally intelligent brands. One 2025 highlight so far has been their work for Saudi National Bank (SNB) to create NEO, a groundbreaking digital lifestyle bank in Saudi Arabia. Saffron integrated cultural and design trends, including Saudi neo-futurism, for its sonic identity to create a product that supports both individual and community connections. The design system strikes a balance between modern Saudi aesthetics and the practical demands of a fast-paced digital product, ensuring a consistent brand reflection across all interactions. 12. Alright Studio Alright Studio is a full-service strategy, creative, production and technology agency based in Brooklyn, New York. It prides itself on a "no house style" approach for clients, including A24, Meta Platforms, and Post Malone. One of the most exciting of their recent projects has been Offball, a digital-first sports news platform that aims to provide more nuanced, positive sports storytelling. Alright Studio designed a clean, intuitive, editorial-style platform featuring a masthead-like logotype and universal sports iconography, creating a calmer user experience aligned with OffBall's positive content. 13. Wolff Olins Wolff Olins is a global brand consultancy with four main offices: London, New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Known for their courageous, culturally relevant branding and forward-thinking strategy, they collaborate with large corporations and trailblazing organisations to create bold, authentic brand identities that resonate emotionally. A particular highlight of 2025 so far has been their collaboration with Leo Burnett to refresh Sandals Resorts' global brand with the "Made of Caribbean" campaign. This strategic move positions Sandals not merely as a luxury resort but as a cultural ambassador for the Caribbean. Wolff Olins developed a new visual identity called "Natural Vibrancy," integrating local influences with modern design to reflect a genuine connection to the islands' culture. This rebrand speaks to a growing traveller demand for authenticity and meaningful experiences, allowing Sandals to define itself as an extension of the Caribbean itself. 14. COLLINS Founded by Brian Collins, COLLINS is an independent branding and design consultancy based in the US, celebrated for its playful visual language, expressive storytelling and culturally rich identity systems. In the last few months, we've loved the new branding they designed for Barcelona's 25th Offf Festival, which departs from its usual consistent wordmark. The updated identity is inspired by the festival's role within the international creative community, and is rooted in the concept of 'Centre Offf Gravity'. This concept is visually expressed through the festival's name, which appears to exert a gravitational pull on the text boxes, causing them to "stick" to it. Additionally, the 'f's in the wordmark are merged into a continuous line reminiscent of a magnet, with the motion graphics further emphasising the gravitational pull as the name floats and other elements follow. 15. Studio Spass Studio Spass is a creative studio based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, focused on vibrant and dynamic identity systems that reflect the diverse and multifaceted nature of cultural institutions. One of their recent landmark projects was Bigger, a large-scale typographic installation created for the Shenzhen Art Book Fair. Inspired by tear-off calendars and the physical act of reading, Studio Spass used 264 A4 books, with each page displaying abstract details, to create an evolving grid of colour and type. Visitors were invited to interact with the installation by flipping pages, constantly revealing new layers of design and a hidden message: "Enjoy books!" 16. Applied Design Works Applied Design Works is a New York studio that specialises in reshaping businesses through branding and design. They provide expertise in design, strategy, and implementation, with a focus on building long-term, collaborative relationships with their clients. We were thrilled by their recent work for Grand Central Madison (the station that connects Long Island to Grand Central Terminal), where they were instrumental in ushering in a new era for the transportation hub. Applied Design sought to create a commuter experience that imbued the spirit of New York, showcasing its diversity of thought, voice, and scale that befits one of the greatest cities in the world and one of the greatest structures in it. 17. The Chase The Chase Creative Consultants is a Manchester-based independent creative consultancy with over 35 years of experience, known for blending humour, purpose, and strong branding to rejuvenate popular consumer campaigns. "We're not designers, writers, advertisers or brand strategists," they say, "but all of these and more. An ideas-based creative studio." Recently, they were tasked with shaping the identity of York Central, a major urban regeneration project set to become a new city quarter for York. The Chase developed the identity based on extensive public engagement, listening to residents of all ages about their perceptions of the city and their hopes for the new area. The resulting brand identity uses linear forms that subtly reference York's famous railway hub, symbolising the long-standing connections the city has fostered. 18. A Practice for Everyday Life Based in London and founded by Kirsty Carter and Emma Thomas, A Practice for Everyday Life built a reputation as a sought-after collaborator with like-minded companies, galleries, institutions and individuals. Not to mention a conceptual rigour that ensures each design is meaningful and original. Recently, they've been working on the visual identity for Muzej Lah, a new international museum for contemporary art in Bled, Slovenia opening in 2026. This centres around a custom typeface inspired by the slanted geometry and square detailing of its concrete roof tiles. It also draws from European modernist typography and the experimental lettering of Jože Plečnik, one of Slovenia's most influential architects.⁠ A Practice for Everyday Life. Photo: Carol Sachs Alexey Brodovitch: Astonish Me publication design by A Practice for Everyday Life, 2024. Photo: Ed Park La Biennale di Venezia identity by A Practice for Everyday Life, 2022. Photo: Thomas Adank CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian identity by A Practice for Everyday Life, 2024. Photo: Sanda Vučković 19. Studio Nari Studio Nari is a London-based creative and branding agency partnering with clients around the world to build "brands that truly connect with people". NARI stands, by the way, for Not Always Right Ideas. As they put it, "It's a name that might sound odd for a branding agency, but it reflects everything we believe." One landmark project this year has been a comprehensive rebrand for the electronic music festival Field Day. Studio Nari created a dynamic and evolving identity that reflects the festival's growth and its connection to the electronic music scene and community. The core idea behind the rebrand is a "reactive future", allowing the brand to adapt and grow with the festival and current trends while maintaining a strong foundation. A new, steadfast wordmark is at its centre, while a new marque has been introduced for the first time. 20. Beetroot Design Group Beetroot is a 25‑strong creative studio celebrated for its bold identities and storytelling-led approach. Based in Thessaloniki, Greece, their work spans visual identity, print, digital and motion, and has earned international recognition, including Red Dot Awards. Recently, they also won a Wood Pencil at the D&AD Awards 2025 for a series of posters created to promote live jazz music events. The creative idea behind all three designs stems from improvisation as a key feature of jazz. Each poster communicates the artist's name and other relevant information through a typographical "improvisation". 21. Kind Studio Kind Studio is an independent creative agency based in London that specialises in branding and digital design, as well as offering services in animation, creative and art direction, and print design. Their goal is to collaborate closely with clients to create impactful and visually appealing designs. One recent project that piqued our interest was a bilingual, editorially-driven digital platform for FC Como Women, a professional Italian football club. To reflect the club's ambition of promoting gender equality and driving positive social change within football, the new website employs bold typography, strong imagery, and an empowering tone of voice to inspire and disseminate its message. 22. Slug Global Slug Global is a creative agency and art collective founded by artist and musician Bosco (Brittany Bosco). Focused on creating immersive experiences "for both IRL and URL", their goal is to work with artists and brands to establish a sustainable media platform that embodies the values of young millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha. One of Slug Global's recent projects involved a collaboration with SheaMoisture and xoNecole for a three-part series called The Root of It. This series celebrates black beauty and hair, highlighting its significance as a connection to ancestry, tradition, blueprint and culture for black women. 23. Little Troop New York studio Little Troop crafts expressive and intimate branding for lifestyle, fashion, and cultural clients. Led by creative directors Noemie Le Coz and Jeremy Elliot, they're known for their playful and often "kid-like" approach to design, drawing inspiration from their own experiences as 90s kids. One of their recent and highly acclaimed projects is the visual identity for MoMA's first-ever family festival, Another World. Little Troop was tasked with developing a comprehensive visual identity that would extend from small items, such as café placemats, to large billboards. Their designs were deliberately a little "dream-like" and relied purely on illustration to sell the festival without needing photography. Little Troop also carefully selected seven colours from MoMA's existing brand guidelines to strike a balance between timelessness, gender neutrality, and fun. 24. Morcos Key Morcos Key is a Brooklyn-based design studio co-founded by Jon Key and Wael Morcos. Collaborating with a diverse range of clients, including arts and cultural institutions, non-profits and commercial enterprises, they're known for translating clients' stories into impactful visual systems through thoughtful conversation and formal expression. One notable project is their visual identity work for Hammer & Hope, a magazine that focuses on politics and culture within the black radical tradition. For this project, Morcos Key developed not only the visual identity but also a custom all-caps typeface to reflect the publication's mission and content. 25. Thirst Thirst, also known as Thirst Craft, is an award-winning strategic drinks packaging design agency based in Glasgow, Scotland, with additional hubs in London and New York. Founded in 2015 by Matthew Stephen Burns and Christopher John Black, the company specializes in building creatively distinctive and commercially effective brands for the beverage industry. To see what they're capable of, check out their work for SKYY Vodka. The new global visual identity system, called Audacious Glamour', aims to unify SKYY under a singular, powerful idea. The visual identity benefits from bolder framing, patterns, and a flavour-forward colour palette to highlight each product's "juicy attitude", while the photography style employs macro shots and liquid highlights to convey a premium feel.

Reading Time: 9 minutes In marketing, data isn’t a buzzword. It’s the lifeblood of all successful campaigns. But are you truly harnessing its power, or are you drowning in a sea of information? To answer this question (and many others), we sat down with Ankur Kothari, a seasoned Martech expert, to dive deep into this crucial topic. This interview, originally conducted for Chapter 6 of “The Customer Engagement Book: Adapt or Die” explores how businesses can translate raw data into actionable insights that drive real results. Ankur shares his wealth of knowledge on identifying valuable customer engagement data, distinguishing between signal and noise, and ultimately, shaping real-time strategies that keep companies ahead of the curve.   Ankur Kothari Q&A Interview 1. What types of customer engagement data are most valuable for making strategic business decisions? Primarily, there are four different buckets of customer engagement data. I would begin with behavioral data, encompassing website interaction, purchase history, and other app usage patterns. Second would be demographic information: age, location, income, and other relevant personal characteristics. Third would be sentiment analysis, where we derive information from social media interaction, customer feedback, or other customer reviews. Fourth would be the customer journey data. We track touchpoints across various channels of the customers to understand the customer journey path and conversion. Combining these four primary sources helps us understand the engagement data. 2. How do you distinguish between data that is actionable versus data that is just noise? First is keeping relevant to your business objectives, making actionable data that directly relates to your specific goals or KPIs, and then taking help from statistical significance. Actionable data shows clear patterns or trends that are statistically valid, whereas other data consists of random fluctuations or outliers, which may not be what you are interested in. You also want to make sure that there is consistency across sources. Actionable insights are typically corroborated by multiple data points or channels, while other data or noise can be more isolated and contradictory. Actionable data suggests clear opportunities for improvement or decision making, whereas noise does not lead to meaningful actions or changes in strategy. By applying these criteria, I can effectively filter out the noise and focus on data that delivers or drives valuable business decisions. 3. How can customer engagement data be used to identify and prioritize new business opportunities? First, it helps us to uncover unmet needs. By analyzing the customer feedback, touch points, support interactions, or usage patterns, we can identify the gaps in our current offerings or areas where customers are experiencing pain points. Second would be identifying emerging needs. Monitoring changes in customer behavior or preferences over time can reveal new market trends or shifts in demand, allowing my company to adapt their products or services accordingly. Third would be segmentation analysis. Detailed customer data analysis enables us to identify unserved or underserved segments or niche markets that may represent untapped opportunities for growth or expansion into newer areas and new geographies. Last is to build competitive differentiation. Engagement data can highlight where our companies outperform competitors, helping us to prioritize opportunities that leverage existing strengths and unique selling propositions. 4. Can you share an example of where data insights directly influenced a critical decision? I will share an example from my previous organization at one of the financial services where we were very data-driven, which made a major impact on our critical decision regarding our credit card offerings. We analyzed the customer engagement data, and we discovered that a large segment of our millennial customers were underutilizing our traditional credit cards but showed high engagement with mobile payment platforms. That insight led us to develop and launch our first digital credit card product with enhanced mobile features and rewards tailored to the millennial spending habits. Since we had access to a lot of transactional data as well, we were able to build a financial product which met that specific segment’s needs. That data-driven decision resulted in a 40% increase in our new credit card applications from this demographic within the first quarter of the launch. Subsequently, our market share improved in that specific segment, which was very crucial. 5. Are there any other examples of ways that you see customer engagement data being able to shape marketing strategy in real time? When it comes to using the engagement data in real-time, we do quite a few things. In the recent past two, three years, we are using that for dynamic content personalization, adjusting the website content, email messaging, or ad creative based on real-time user behavior and preferences. We automate campaign optimization using specific AI-driven tools to continuously analyze performance metrics and automatically reallocate the budget to top-performing channels or ad segments. Then we also build responsive social media engagement platforms like monitoring social media sentiments and trending topics to quickly adapt the messaging and create timely and relevant content. With one-on-one personalization, we do a lot of A/B testing as part of the overall rapid testing and market elements like subject lines, CTAs, and building various successful variants of the campaigns. 6. How are you doing the 1:1 personalization? We have advanced CDP systems, and we are tracking each customer’s behavior in real-time. So the moment they move to different channels, we know what the context is, what the relevance is, and the recent interaction points, so we can cater the right offer. So for example, if you looked at a certain offer on the website and you came from Google, and then the next day you walk into an in-person interaction, our agent will already know that you were looking at that offer. That gives our customer or potential customer more one-to-one personalization instead of just segment-based or bulk interaction kind of experience. We have a huge team of data scientists, data analysts, and AI model creators who help us to analyze big volumes of data and bring the right insights to our marketing and sales team so that they can provide the right experience to our customers. 7. What role does customer engagement data play in influencing cross-functional decisions, such as with product development, sales, and customer service? Primarily with product development — we have different products, not just the financial products or products whichever organizations sell, but also various products like mobile apps or websites they use for transactions. So that kind of product development gets improved. The engagement data helps our sales and marketing teams create more targeted campaigns, optimize channel selection, and refine messaging to resonate with specific customer segments. Customer service also gets helped by anticipating common issues, personalizing support interactions over the phone or email or chat, and proactively addressing potential problems, leading to improved customer satisfaction and retention. So in general, cross-functional application of engagement improves the customer-centric approach throughout the organization. 8. What do you think some of the main challenges marketers face when trying to translate customer engagement data into actionable business insights? I think the huge amount of data we are dealing with. As we are getting more digitally savvy and most of the customers are moving to digital channels, we are getting a lot of data, and that sheer volume of data can be overwhelming, making it very difficult to identify truly meaningful patterns and insights. Because of the huge data overload, we create data silos in this process, so information often exists in separate systems across different departments. We are not able to build a holistic view of customer engagement. Because of data silos and overload of data, data quality issues appear. There is inconsistency, and inaccurate data can lead to incorrect insights or poor decision-making. Quality issues could also be due to the wrong format of the data, or the data is stale and no longer relevant. As we are growing and adding more people to help us understand customer engagement, I’ve also noticed that technical folks, especially data scientists and data analysts, lack skills to properly interpret the data or apply data insights effectively. So there’s a lack of understanding of marketing and sales as domains. It’s a huge effort and can take a lot of investment. Not being able to calculate the ROI of your overall investment is a big challenge that many organizations are facing. 9. Why do you think the analysts don’t have the business acumen to properly do more than analyze the data? If people do not have the right idea of why we are collecting this data, we collect a lot of noise, and that brings in huge volumes of data. If you cannot stop that from step one—not bringing noise into the data system—that cannot be done by just technical folks or people who do not have business knowledge. Business people do not know everything about what data is being collected from which source and what data they need. It’s a gap between business domain knowledge, specifically marketing and sales needs, and technical folks who don’t have a lot of exposure to that side. Similarly, marketing business people do not have much exposure to the technical side — what’s possible to do with data, how much effort it takes, what’s relevant versus not relevant, and how to prioritize which data sources will be most important. 10. Do you have any suggestions for how this can be overcome, or have you seen it in action where it has been solved before? First, cross-functional training: training different roles to help them understand why we’re doing this and what the business goals are, giving technical people exposure to what marketing and sales teams do. And giving business folks exposure to the technology side through training on different tools, strategies, and the roadmap of data integrations. The second is helping teams work more collaboratively. So it’s not like the technology team works in a silo and comes back when their work is done, and then marketing and sales teams act upon it. Now we’re making it more like one team. You work together so that you can complement each other, and we have a better strategy from day one. 11. How do you address skepticism or resistance from stakeholders when presenting data-driven recommendations? We present clear business cases where we demonstrate how data-driven recommendations can directly align with business objectives and potential ROI. We build compelling visualizations, easy-to-understand charts and graphs that clearly illustrate the insights and the implications for business goals. We also do a lot of POCs and pilot projects with small-scale implementations to showcase tangible results and build confidence in the data-driven approach throughout the organization. 12. What technologies or tools have you found most effective for gathering and analyzing customer engagement data? I’ve found that Customer Data Platforms help us unify customer data from various sources, providing a comprehensive view of customer interactions across touch points. Having advanced analytics platforms — tools with AI and machine learning capabilities that can process large volumes of data and uncover complex patterns and insights — is a great value to us. We always use, or many organizations use, marketing automation systems to improve marketing team productivity, helping us track and analyze customer interactions across multiple channels. Another thing is social media listening tools, wherever your brand is mentioned or you want to measure customer sentiment over social media, or track the engagement of your campaigns across social media platforms. Last is web analytical tools, which provide detailed insights into your website visitors’ behaviors and engagement metrics, for browser apps, small browser apps, various devices, and mobile apps. 13. How do you ensure data quality and consistency across multiple channels to make these informed decisions? We established clear guidelines for data collection, storage, and usage across all channels to maintain consistency. Then we use data integration platforms — tools that consolidate data from various sources into a single unified view, reducing discrepancies and inconsistencies. While we collect data from different sources, we clean the data so it becomes cleaner with every stage of processing. We also conduct regular data audits — performing periodic checks to identify and rectify data quality issues, ensuring accuracy and reliability of information. We also deploy standardized data formats. On top of that, we have various automated data cleansing tools, specific software to detect and correct data errors, redundancies, duplicates, and inconsistencies in data sets automatically. 14. How do you see the role of customer engagement data evolving in shaping business strategies over the next five years? The first thing that’s been the biggest trend from the past two years is AI-driven decision making, which I think will become more prevalent, with advanced algorithms processing vast amounts of engagement data in real-time to inform strategic choices. Somewhat related to this is predictive analytics, which will play an even larger role, enabling businesses to anticipate customer needs and market trends with more accuracy and better predictive capabilities. We also touched upon hyper-personalization. We are all trying to strive toward more hyper-personalization at scale, which is more one-on-one personalization, as we are increasingly capturing more engagement data and have bigger systems and infrastructure to support processing those large volumes of data so we can achieve those hyper-personalization use cases. As the world is collecting more data, privacy concerns and regulations come into play. I believe in the next few years there will be more innovation toward how businesses can collect data ethically and what the usage practices are, leading to more transparent and consent-based engagement data strategies. And lastly, I think about the integration of engagement data, which is always a big challenge. I believe as we’re solving those integration challenges, we are adding more and more complex data sources to the picture. So I think there will need to be more innovation or sophistication brought into data integration strategies, which will help us take a truly customer-centric approach to strategy formulation.   This interview Q&A was hosted with Ankur Kothari, a previous Martech Executive, for Chapter 6 of The Customer Engagement Book: Adapt or Die. Download the PDF or request a physical copy of the book here. The post Ankur Kothari Q&A: Customer Engagement Book Interview appeared first on MoEngage.

In-app bidding has automated most waterfall optimization, yet developers still manage multiple hybrid waterfalls, each with dozens of manual instances. Naturally, this can be timely and overwhelming to maintain, keeping you from optimizing to perfection and focusing on other opportunities to boost revenue.Rather than analyzing each individual network and checking if instances are available at each price point, breaking down your waterfall into different CPM ranges allows you to visualize the waterfall and easily identify the gaps.Here are some tips on how to use CPM buckets to better optimize your waterfall’s performance.What are CPM buckets?CPM buckets show you exactly how much revenue and how many impressions you’re getting from each CPM price range, giving you a more granular idea of how different networks are competing in the waterfall. CPM buckets are a feature of real time pivot reports, available on ironSource LevelPlay.Identifying and closing the gapsTypically in a waterfall, you can only see each ad network’s average CPM. But this keeps you from seeing ad network distribution across all price points and understanding exactly where ad networks are bidding. Bottom line - you don’t know where in the waterfall you should add a new instance.By separating CPM into buckets, (for example, seeing all the ad networks generating a CPM of $10-$20) you understand exactly which networks are driving impressions and revenue and which CPMs aren’t being filledNow how do you do it? As a LevelPlay client, simply use ironSource’s real time pivot reports - choose the CPM bucket filter option and sort by “average bid price.” From here, you’ll see how your revenue spreads out among CPM ranges and you’ll start to notice gaps in your bar graph. Every gap in revenue - where revenue is much lower than the neighboring CPM group - indicates an opportunity to optimize your monetization strategy. The buckets can range from small increments like $1 to larger increments like $10, so it’s important to compare CPM buckets of the same incremental value.Pro tip: To best set up your waterfall, create one tab with the general waterfall (filter app, OS, Ad unit, geo/geos from a specific group) and make sure to look at Revenue and eCPM in the “measures” dropdown. In the “show” section, choose CPM buckets and sort by average bid price. From here, you can mark down any gaps.But where do these gaps come from? Gaps in revenue are often due to friction in the waterfall, like not enough instances, instances that aren’t working, or a waterfall setup mistake. But gaps can also be adjusted and fixed.Once you’ve found a gap, you can look at the CPM buckets around it to better understand the context. Let’s say you see a strong instance generating significant revenue in the CPM bucket right below it, in the $70-80 group. This instance from this specific ad network has a lot of potential, so it’s worth trying to push it to a higher CPM bucket.In fact, when you look at higher CPM buckets, you don’t see this ad network anywhere else in the waterfall - what a missed opportunity! Try adding another instance of this network higher up in the waterfall. If you’re profiting well with a $70-80 CPM, imagine how much more revenue you could bring at a $150 CPM.Pro tip: Focusing on higher areas in the waterfall makes a larger financial impact, leading to bigger increases in ARPDAU.Let’s say you decide to add 5 instances of that network to higher CPM buckets. You can use LevelPlay’s quick A/B test to understand if this adjustment boosts your revenue - not just for this gap, but for any and all that you find. Simply compare your existing waterfall against the new waterfall with these 5 higher instances - then implement the one that drives the highest instances.Božo Janković, Head of Ad Monetization at GameBiz Consulting, uses CPM buckets "to understand at which CPMs the bidding networks are filling. From there, I can pinpoint exactly where in the waterfall to add more traditional instances - which creates more competition, especially for the bidding networks, and creates an opportunity for revenue growth."Finding new insightsYou can dig even deeper into your data by filtering by ad source. Before CPM buckets, you were limited to seeing an average eCPM for each bidding network. Maybe you knew that one ad source had an average CPM of $50, but the distribution of impression across the waterfall was a black box. Now, we know exactly which CPMs the bidders are filling. “I find ironSource CPM buckets feature very insightful and and use it daily. It’s an easy way to identify opportunities to optimize the waterfall and earn even more revenue." -Božo Janković, Head of Ad Monetization at GameBiz ConsultingUnderstanding your CPM distribution empowers you to not only identify your revenue sources, but also to promote revenue growth. Armed with the knowledge of which buckets some of their stronger bidding networking are performing in, some publishers actively add instances from traditional networks above those ranges. This creates better competition and also helps drive up the bids from the biddersThere’s no need for deep analysis - once you see the gaps, you can quickly understand who’s performing in the lower and higher buckets, and see exactly what’s missing. This way, you won’t miss out on any lost revenue.Learn more about CPM buckets, available exclusively to ironSource LevelPlay here.