The ability to match a brand’s existing first-party customer data to a media owner’s authenticated audience is going to become increasingly valuable as third-party identifiers, that have previously provided much of the connectivity between brands and media owners, become redundant.
Facebook and Google were the first companies to offer a service that allows advertisers to find their existing and lapsed customers within their audience through a matching process. Others, such as identity vendors, have attempted to offer similar functionality to advertisers. However, these solutions are built on outdated technology that requires advertisers to centralise their data into the third-party’s environment, where it is commingled with other data sets.
This process of centralisation creates two key challenges for each party:
- When data is transferred into a third-party environment and commingled with other datasets, the owner of that data loses control of the data and others are able to reap commercial benefits from that data.
- Following various high profile data leakage and misuse stories, consumer awareness is at an all-time high. As such, brands and media owners are expected to more closely safeguard the privacy of their customers, and transferring data to another company is not aligned with this priority
These two challenges have led to both advertisers and media owners to question how they’ll power data-driven marketing strategies in the future, as they look to move away from centralised solutions.
A decentralised approach to audience matching
A decentralised marketing infrastructure, such as that provided by InfoSum, unlocks the ability to match customer data to authenticated audiences, without either party having to sacrifice the privacy of their customers, or the commercial value of their data.
Within the InfoSum marketing infrastructure, each company’s first-party data is held in its own isolated, secure and private Bunker. Rather than requiring the data within these Bunkers to be moved, InfoSum creates anonymous mathematical models of the data which can move between each Bunker and drive audience insights.
One of the pieces of analysis you can conduct is to match the individuals in your customer data, against media owners. But because of InfoSum’s privacy-by-design approach, no data is passed between each party, and individual identities are never exposed.
This empowers advertisers and media owners to match their audience data and build highly targeted custom audiences, without risking the commercial value and security of the data, or the privacy of customers.
The benefits of decentralised audience matching
Now that advertisers and media owners are able to safely and securely collaborate across their first-party data sources, let’s look at three key benefits of matching first-party data to a media owner’s authenticated audience.
Reach existing customers
Being able to identify and communicate with your existing customers through marketing activity is incredibly useful when looking to upsell. As we approach the release of the next-generation of video gaming consoles, both companies and the various video game developers should be looking to identify and target existing customers with their next-gen offerings.
Through a direct audience match with media owners, these companies can not only find their current customers, but they can also use the knowledge the media owner has to tailor the messaging further.
For example, Channel 4 currently use InfoSum to power their BrandMatch solution that enables the functionality we’re discussing. Channel 4 holds rich audience insights on its All 4 customers that these companies can use to both tailor creative, but also further segment the audience depending on their interests, for example, sports games vs. action-adventure games.
For more details on delivering high performing marketing across connected TV, download our guide.
Re-engage lapsed customers
Re-engaging customers who have not bought from you recently or have cancelled subscriptions, is an incredibly powerful way to reintroduce lost revenue. An example of this would be a mobile phone network looking to re-engage individuals who switched networks 12-24 months ago.
With the release of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro last month, it would be advantageous for mobile phone networks to attempt to lure former customers back to their network. Another media owner who is already using InfoSum to match their audience to advertisers customer data is The Telegraph. For a mobile phone network, it would be powerful to not only find their lapsed customers on The Telegraph but to further segment their audience to lapsed customers who have been reading recent iPhone news on The Telegraph.
Engage new customers
The final benefit of matching audiences with a media owner is the ability to engage with new customers. An example of this would be an automotive brand wishing to sell their latest electric car.
As announced in August 2020, ITV is utilising InfoSum’s decentralised infrastructure as part of their Planet V offering. By matching their existing electric and hybrid customers to ITV’s audience, the automotive brand is able to identify common characteristics in the intersection, including any programming that holds a strong affinity to these customers.
These characteristics can then be used as part of a seed audience to run a lookalike model and discover similar individuals that can be targeted across ITV Hub.
For more details on delivering high performing marketing across connected TV, download our guide.
Final thoughts
With marketing budgets under increasing scrutiny due to the socio-economic impact of the COVID crisis, it is more important than ever that brands are finding strategies to optimise their ad spend. By matching existing and lapsed customer data with media owners authenticated audience, brands can pre-validate the value of their audience and build tailored audiences that are likely to deliver better results.
However, in the modern world, where data holds such significant commercial value, you should not risk sharing this data with another company. Therefore it is only through a decentralised marketing infrastructure that audiences can be matched and targeted without risking the value of the data, or the privacy of customers.
