Marketers leverage their data management platforms (DMPs) for everything from storing data to ad targeting, but there’s one particular use case that's most prioritized.

According to a January 2018 survey of US ad and marketing professionals conducted by Advertiser Perceptions, ad inventory discovery is the top criterion that drives DMP selection.

DMPs help marketers find the inventory they seek by creating custom audience segments. Identifying target audiences then helps programmatic buyers determine what inventory to purchase.

Inventory discovery may be a popular measure for DMP selection, but it’s not the only factor that matters to marketers.

John Lockmer, director of programmatic and ad operations at marketing consultancy DuMont Project, said the two main factors he considers when shopping for a DMP are how the platform will connect to his firm’s ad tech stack and how much it will cost to use. Some DMPs cost more than $500,000 to license for managing data sets of up to 50 million users, while other ad tech firms cut clients a deal on their DMPs if the clients already use the ad tech firm’s demand-side platform (DSP).

“It makes it easier for us to work with them, as it does not require a yearly contract and commitment like [standalone] DMPs,” Lockmer said.

Selecting the most appropriate DMP is a critical component of digital marketing campaigns. According to a November 2017 survey by Salesforce, about half of business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) advertisers rely on DMPs to measure digital ad effectiveness.