This case study article explains how we utilized Snowflake as an extra layer in the Publicis Media data stack to empower internal business teams. Therefore, to effectively access actionable data, take better decisions and deliver the best results for their customers.
Key Challenges
Our client is one of the largest multinational advertising service providers and media groups. It offers various communication services for global media agencies. Within the scope of digital advertisement analysis, the company collects large amounts of data from various and diverse demand sides, advertisement management and social media platforms.
As part of a cross-functional project for the German market, our client seeks to centralize and automate internal tools & processes related to digital reporting. But because of the novelty and complexity of the existing data stack, the internal business teams were not able to access, consume and exploit the available data at will, and thus lacked crucial analytics and deep dive capabilities.
Therefore, our client was looking to:
- Deliver multiple data sources via performance data aggregates and dimensional masterdata for business tailored provisioning;
- Ensure product stability, data availability and data quality for delivered reporting layer;
- Provide internal teams with easy data access and accurate reporting on any of their media activities (historic/running/planned).
Our Approach
In order for us to meet our client’s expectations, it was decided to complement Publicis Media’s central data platform and data landscape by utilizing Snowflake as an extra layer. Snowflake was considered as a lightweight Data Warehouse, dedicated for efficient adhoc access to ready-to-consume data. Based upon the central Data Platform on Azure Cloud, where Python and Spark in Databricks are used for data wrangling and data refinement, Snowflake is consuming and enriching these refined tables. Therefore, we collaborated with the engineering team to:
- Setup Snowflake as intermediate reporting layer for report/dashboard provisioning;
- Integrate external data sources for actually delivered media activities and internal databases on corresponding media activity planning, dealing and buying;
- Enable data aggregations and enrichments for target-performance-comparisons;
- Synchronize data sources to allow for campaign analysis over different data sources (Google, Amazon, …) concerning performance and spendings;
- Provide self-service access and filtering capabilities to enriched data for data consumers and their dashboards/reports;
- Ensure integration of business logic, data availability checks and quality assurance directly in reporting layer before actual dashboard/report tools.
Benefits
- Centralized data access from reporting tools and dashboards;
- Permanent data warehouse availability for high-frequent updates and live-connection queries;
- Easy overview of cost splitting of different departments;
- Onboarding of new media planners and campaign managers simplified and supported by accurate and actionable data;
- All-in-one and auto-prepared target-performance comparisons help media planners and campaign managers to take better decisions and replace formerly manual reporting efforts.
The successful utilization of Snowflake in the Publicis Media data landscape has led to the emergence of new reporting use cases and data products. We are continuing to deliver several cases including a benchmarking dashboard for performance monitoring of internal teams, a cost tracking report for internal advertisement management and controlling, and a session tracking report to analyze the performance achieved versus the performance promised to a client.
Team involved
One Product Owner and Data Team Lead is collaborating with our client’s business teams and a team of Data Engineers and Reporting Engineers on this project for one year.
Technologies and Partners
Thanks to our
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