The last quarter of 2009 should be partly remembered in the advertising community as a juncture when big agencies -- namely Omnicom Media Group, The Nielsen Company, and WPP -- announced consumer data mergers. The deals entailed the marriages of offline and online data and appeared to reveal a potentially major stepping stone in the evolution of "hyper-targeting."
Some of the agencies have trumpeted their newfound ability to create consumer segments related to behavioral elements such as "passion points" (e.g., shown interest in electronics, photography, fantasy football, etc.), as well as geographic location, beverage preferences, favorite social media sites, activity levels at the sites, and so on.
Oct. 22: Omnicom Gets Access to Fox Consumer Panel
Omnicom fired the first warning shot when announcing access to News Corp.'s Fox Audience Network (FAN) consumer panel, which pulls data from 700 publisher sites. FAN's audience segmentation system allows Omnicom to group anonymous online consumers who share mutual interests like sports, movies, and music, and then target them. It has been plugged into Omnicom's multichannel data-driven campaign management tool, Living Segments.
Nov. 2: Nielsen in Pact to Use Offline Data for Online Ad Targeting
Two weeks later, Nielsen and consumer data firm DataLogix forged an agreement to allow household-level online ad targeting using Nielsen's audience cluster PRIZM data. Several ad networks, including Audience Science and Collective Media, are offering the targeting capabilities to advertisers.
Nov. 10: Compete & Sister Company Merge Data
Then, Kantar, part of WPP, combined data from its marketing research firms Compete Inc. and Cannondale Associates to help brands link the effectiveness of digital campaigns to in-store consumer purchases. Compete's online consumer research panel of two million viewers was hitched to its sister company's ShopperGenetics data platform, which collects info from the loyalty cards of 80 million households.
Dec. 15: WPP to Leverage Kantar Data
Lastly, WPP Digital said the month-old data merger from its Kantar properties, Compete and Cannondale Associates, would now, in theory, help create better media planning for WPP's Media Innovation Group (MIG) division.
The mergers certainly open up interesting targeting opportunities, however media agencies are only as good as the people they hire and in some markets they are still amongst the lowest paying. The greatest database is useless if you don't have smart people extracting actionable insights form it.
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