As Advertising Week 2015 kicks off this week, and we celebrate all-things advertising, it is worth looking at how ad tech has revolutionized the collection and application of data in real time – to deliver greater customer engagement and higher marketing return on investment.  We’ve long known this in the offline world – now it’s equally true online, and in real-time, too.

A study by the Digital Advertising Alliance proves the premium value of data that is interest-based. Online advertising that uses cookie technology to increase relevance by leveraging consumers’ information generates significantly greater economic value than advertising without cookies, according to the research. Specifically, the availability of cookies to facilitate information transfer increases the average impression price paid by advertisers by 60 percent to 200 percent. Additionally, ads for which cookie-related information was available sold for three-to-seven times higher than ads without cookies.

The point here is not about cookies which predominate in desktop advertising – but rather data collection to enable interest-based advertising on any screen. The same might be said statistical identification and device id’s used in mobile marketing, which enable cross-site and cross-app data collection for interest-based advertising purposes.

We applaud this exploration of the economic and social value of data in advertising. Data is only part of advertising success – great creative and a compelling offer must complement smart data collection, delivery and analyses. But ad tech certainly has underlined what’s been known in the offline marketing data world for years: your campaign is only as good as your data.