Behavioural targeting has been around for years, fuelled by data from web and app tracking, digital footprints, browsing behaviour and even offline activities. Unlike attitudinal targeting, this selects consumers based on what they do, not why they say they do it. It allows marketers and advertisers to reach the closest-to-action and highest-value segments with personalised recommendations
But why are we talking about this again? What’s changed in the last few years? And what’s on the horizon?
You would be aware that privacy regulations such as CCPA,GDPR and cookie deprecation have reduced the volume and granularity of identifiable data available to marketers. The further you are from end-users in the marketing supply chain, the less likely you’ll be to get your hands on personal log-level data.
Despite advancements in Artificial intelligence,metaverse and machine learning that have taken programmatic and real-time to unseen-before levels, we still face issues with accurately defining the right audiences with this loss of cookie-level data.
However, there are options to achieve marketing goals without infringing on consumer privacy or violating regulations.
USE AI AND ML TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
Even with a lack of individual-level data, these technologies can process copious amounts in record time. With the number of tools available, we can enhance the accuracy and effectiveness of what we do with the limited data we have.
If we can’t observe in real-time, we can simulate and predict what they could be doing. For instance, the right AI tool can help analyse the website’s user base and place your ad only if it matches certain criteria.
INTEGRATE YOUR DATA WITH OTHER SOURCES
When faced with a shortage of useful data from one source, combine multiple owned sources and build stronger datasets for a more comprehensive user profile. This could mean gathering customer sales data that may be stored in CRMs. Or advertising/media data about the anonymised user.
Or surveydata from your customer feedback team. Or loyalty rewards data from customer experience teams. Investing in platforms you don’t feel entirely ready for may also be necessary – the likes of data clean rooms and customer data platforms. Strong advertising and media partners can make this process less overwhelming.
At essencemediacom, we leverage the power of GroupM to provide consultancy and tools to fill gaps within your martech ecosystem with valuable behavioural data (such as dynamic creative optimisation results which indicate your audience’s drivers through relevance metrics or paid search queries that show innate intent)
“Solutions for identity resolution and privacy preservation can also be used to enhance targeting effectiveness”
ADAPT WITH CONTEXTUAL ADVERTISING
Use cohort-level data to understand which genres and content resonate with your best-performing users. Advertise in meaningful and relevant contexts, and stay on top of experimental audiences and campaigns to minimise wastage and improve your ROI.
Some examples of contextual advertising are playlist, channel and account take-overs, ads on category-relevant websites and in-aisle or on-shelf placements
USE PRIVACY-PRESERVING TECHNOLOGIE
Pick those that protect end-users, while also enabling advertisers. Some examples are:
Federated learning and On-Device Processing – the training dataset remains on the device it was collected from, avoiding centralised storage and cloud-based data warehouses.
Differential privacy – reveals cohort behavioural patterns while withholding those of the individuals within them
FIND BEHAVIOURAL PROXIES IN OTHER DATA SOURCE
You don’t want to understand only your current consumers, right? Exploring sources of future demand using proxies such as emotion and sentiment are also important. Can you think of other behavioural predictors for both current and future consumers
WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON?
As the world adapts to the new normal, the challenges in advertising targeting also present the best opportunities. Solutions for identity resolution, privacy preservation and returning data control to end-users can also enhance targeting effectiveness
- Google’s Privacy Sandbox- an initiative to facilitate online advertising without reliance on 3rd-party cookies. Early testing in Q1 2023 of privacy-preserving behavioural and interest based signals for audience targeting showed no major decline in performance, with room for improvement.
- Programmatic advancements – eg: The Trade Desk’s Unified ID which anonymises data used for targeting
- Using data from syndicated survey providers that link with social listening tools can help us build segments from attitudinal and intent signals to further explore and activat
At essencemediacom, we embrace Breakthrough Planning with our proprietary Action-Based Advertising, emAffinites, emStreamSync as well as GroupM’s Audience Origin Consumer Surveys, Audience Translator and Architect (that sync with and allow recreation of behavioural targets in-platform).
The key is to have the right skillset to understand the audience problem, nuances and context and then use existing tools and technologies to define, resolve, and optimise audience targets. It’s time to embrace the challenge
By Kim Mascarenhas, Head of Strategic Insights – MENA at essencemediacom
