Horizon Media Canada has launched Blu, its proprietary connected audience platform that enables the delivery of personalized ads at scale while ensuring transparency and user privacy.
Blu was first introduced in the U.S. in 2020. Rather than force-fit the platform into this country, the Canadian agency has been working with data and technology partners to create a scalable solution that reflects Canada’s population, data and regulations. Blu uses first-party data and deterministic attributes to create profiles of over 25 million adult Canadians and has been built for a cookieless world. Blu also features clean room technology which enables onboarding of first-party data in a privacy-compliant way.
The Canadian launch is the first step in Horizon Media’s global expansion of Blu.
Caroline Bergeron, Horizon’s SVP Data & Digital Solutions, explains that the marketing platform lives through the agency’s entire planning process from early audience development, audience insights for clients, and understanding whom are the high-value customers with growth potential. Then the platform is used for media plans, channel allocation and activation and measurement.
“For us, it was important that we keep connected to addressable channels, so we can send those audiences that we create within Blu to be activated within social or programmatic platforms. We can create custom deal IDs with publishers that are matched against our Blu audiences and we can share audiences with publishers or media owners for direct activation,” says Bergeron.
She says that U.S. case studies for major brands have shown that Blu produced deeper audience insights that allowed the agency to micro-target, especially in digital, and optimize at a granular level. Blu also helps with reach management, since its cross-platform functionality means the same audience can be replicated in a similar way in every channel and every walled garden.
Horizon research has found that younger Canadians are more receptive to personalized ads than older generations, and they are more likely to engage with brands online after seeing a personalized ad according to a survey conducted by Horizon Media Canada’s Strategy & Insights group.
The data shows that 56% of younger Canadians prefer personalized over traditional advertising. Additionally, 45% of younger Canadians are likely to engage with a brand online after seeing a personalized ad, compared to only 18% for traditional ads. Nearly half of Gen Z and millennials also said they would provide more personal information if there were incentives or rewards to do so. The survey was created using Horizon’s Finger on the Pulse research methodology and included more than 300 Canadians nationwide from October 11 to October 16.
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