When Dell sought to test cookie-less programmatic targeting with their agency, Mediacom, they turned to MiQ. To meet the challenge MiQ worked with Environics Analytics (EA) and demonstrated that PRIZM® and geographic targeting could be more effective than the traditional, disappearing cookie. Can Dell maintain the performance of their programmatic strategy without cookie targeting?
Working with MiQ, EA segmented Dell’s first-party (1P) data and then ranked the prospects for activation. From there, MiQ layered on targeting using EA’s PRIZM® segments to test their effectiveness. The performance of these target audiences was measured against the historical performance of cookie-based campaigns.
Looking at the return on advertising spend (ROAS), the EA ranking of 1P data and the PRIZM® targeting outperformed Dell’s baseline cookie campaigns. PRIZM® targets had a 2.1X ROAS compared to cookie targeting. The ranked 1P audience had a 2.8X ROAS. These results are exciting for Dell and Mediacom because not only can they maintain their results in programmatic campaigns, but they can improve upon them as well.
“Cases like Dell show the success that can be achieved when data-driven insights and campaign activation are connected,” says Evan Wood (pictured, right), chief strategy officer of Environics Analytics. “We are proud of the way our data have evolved to be such an important part of the entire digital ecosystem, from the initial strategy, right through to campaign execution and measurement.”
Wood says, “programmatic sounds impersonal and transactional, but it is actually one of the most intimate forms of communication we have. If you get it right, it is one of the most powerful and efficient way to conduct advertising.”
From its longstanding PRIZM® segmentation system, which classifies neighbourhoods into unique lifestyle types by integrating geographic, demographic and psychographic data, to its recently launched EAVault clean room environment, tailor-built for Canada, EA has been helping marketers transform data and analytics into insight, execution and results for years. And it continues to do so in the rapidly evolving programmatic advertising space.
“People see a lift in performance when they use these data,” says Andrea Longman (pictured, left), SVP and practice leader for media & agencies at Environics Analytics. “Geographic-based data allow you to easily target and broaden your audience when it comes to programmatic, but also enable you to be nimbler and more dynamic so that you’ll reach the right people with the right message at the right time.”
EA is also enabling ‘big data’ sources such as mobile movement data in programmatic advertising by linking this data to EA’s 30,000 descriptive variables and PRIZM® segmentation. Doing so enables businesses, insight professionals and marketers to not only understand the dynamic movement behaviours of consumers but to also determine – in a privacy-compliant way – who these consumers are demographically, behaviourally and psychographically. “We can actually measure whether there’s a lift in traffic going into a brand’s locations during and after a campaign, and importantly, what those consumers look like,” Longman says.
With newcomers being the country’s leading source of population growth and an important target audience for many advertisers, EA is also putting greater emphasis on data that helps brands understand people who are new to Canada. This includes both temporary and permanent residents. Given Canada’s size and diversity, there is a need to appreciate geographical and data differences to ensure marketers can make informed decisions about micro-communities. NewToCanada data is updated quarterly, allowing EA to detect trends so that marketers can recognize and engage with temporary and permanent residents, Longman says.
“We access source data from Statistics Canada,” Longman says, “but what makes our data unique is that we fill in the gaps and make the data actionable. We are modelling to the small neighbourhood level so they can be used for targeting.” Marketers can use NewToCanada to identify the top countries that newcomers are originating from and the neighbourhoods that they are settling in to target their efforts.
Another critical topic of discussion impacting the programmatic industry are data clean rooms. These are becoming increasingly important due to the elevated concern about consumer privacy and the disappearance of cookies and location signals, Longman says.
The EAVault provides a neutral, secure environment for advertisers and publishers to collaborate and match first-party data without actually sharing any data with the other party. The result is a privacy-compliant way to effectively match permission-based consumers across the ecosystem, define and scale target audiences, execute campaigns and measure the results, all with a high degree of transparency. EAVault services have been built specifically for Canada and our privacy environment, says Longman, adding that EA provides a fully managed clean room service so that there is no ‘heavy lifting’ for participating brands, agencies and publishers. Clean room solutions are not only becoming important enablers of targeting and activation but also being leveraged to help marketers understand how campaign spend is driving results. “We can help show how ad exposure leads to lift, whether that lift is transactional, web-based or at a physical location. That is pretty exciting because it allows marketers to be more data-driven and innovative while respecting customers’ privacy and trust.”
