Online targeting data has a growing offline component. The convergence of the two sources was viewed from both buyer and seller perspectives during Wednesday’s DIGIDAY:Target conference.
Moderator Jeff Hochberg, VP audience targeting for Aol framed the exchange, noting that the influx of new targeting technologies using in-market or “bottom of the funnel data,” is now mixing with offline data applied online. Experian client partner VP Curtis Villars said his firm is working with partners to bring products and services to market using Experian’s long history of offline data collection to build increasingly accurate “propensity models” for online application. These “propensities” go well beyond traditional demographic and statistical models.
EBay’s data licensing and strategy chief, Dave Chiang, described his company's go-to-market approach as “testing our way in, seeing how data is used, and how we can actually apply it ourselves.” Chiang said eBay progressed through media buying stages to SEO/SEM elements, affiliate networks and so on as it has created the “eBay ecosystem.”
Aol’s Hochberg had panelists weigh in on regulatory concerns faced by data vendors and buyers of every stripe. Another interesting tract was whether or not data is being “spread too thin” in a multi-channel online environment. Addressing that point from the media buyer’s viewpoint, Innovation Interactive’s Chris Hansen said, “a lot of publishers come selling in the same data products.” For this reason Hansen called data one “ingredient in a larger recipe” of media. He also reminded publishers that beyond targeting and other technologies, they need to remain unique.
Hansen’s agency perspective supplied much of the panel’s edge, as he noted that when buying any audience, “it goes down to pure math. Does it work?” Panelists offered further insights, saying that companies with many years of direct marketing and media buying experience tend to be more sophisticated when it comes to data acquisition and best practices in new targeting technologies.
