Have you wondered how the shift toward real-time data is reshaping the way companies connect with consumers? Traditional methods of third-party data collection and demographic targeting are being replaced by more privacy-conscious approaches. In our next Ask the Expert segment, we explore how Experian and Captify’s partnership is harnessing the power of real-time onsite search data to enhance personalized advertising, address identity fragmentation, and provide valuable insights for navigating modern advertising challenges.
We’re joined by industry leaders, Amelia Waddington, Chief Product Officer at Captify, and Chris Feo, Experian’s SVP of Sales & Partnerships. In this segment, they discuss the complexities of identity and the innovative use of real-time data in digital advertising. Watch the full Q&A below to learn more about these topics and discover how the collaborative efforts of Experian and Captify are shaping the future of personalized advertising.
Understanding the power of real-time marketing data
Real-time data provides an up-to-the-minute view of consumer behavior, enabling marketers to make quick, informed decisions. Captify’s use of real-time search data allows for immediate insights, contrasting with traditional third-party data, which often involves delay and prompted answers. This approach allows marketers to see trends and reactions as they unfold, making it possible to tweak campaigns and strategies and always reach the most in-market consumers. By using Captify’s real-time data, we can predict consumer interests and adapt to market changes quickly.
Staying ahead of market trends with predictive analytics
Captify analyzes more than a billion search signals daily, giving brands a detailed look at changes in audience behavior. These real-time insights help businesses make timely adjustments and reach their audiences in the moments that matter. Beyond digital media, Captify’s multi-channel activation strategy extends to platforms such as connected TV and digital out-of-home, ensuring messages remain relevant and effective.
How Experian and Captify work together
Imagine being able to tailor your ads to consumers’ needs and interests in real time. Our partnership with Captify enhances ad targeting and measurement by combining Experian’s vast Digital Graph with Captify’s real-time intent data. “Captify has evolved beyond relying on third-party cookies in isolation and now uses the Experian Graph to provide a more holistic view of identity at both the individual and household levels” says Amelia Waddington, Chief Product Officer at Captify.
As privacy concerns grow, we have built and continue to invest in a signal-agnostic Digital Graph that can make connections across a wide range of identifiers, including the Experian Living Unit ID (LUID). The LUID is a unique identifier representing each household in the United States, based on real households and real people. This allows essential demographic information to be enriched to a household, enriching first-party data with detailed consumer insights, like age, gender, historical purchase behavior, and future purchase intent. By continuously adding new data and building fresh audiences and segments, we provide greater insights into the consumer base. Our Digital Graph serves as Captify’s identity spine, allowing them to connect identifiers together at both the person and household levels. This helps their clients target ads more accurately across different channels, making it easier to track and understand consumer behavior across platforms like TV, digital, and radio.
Here are five key ways our partnership enhances ad targeting and measurement:
Enhancing personalized advertising with real-time insights
Identity fragmentation is a challenge for marketers because consumer data is scattered across different devices and platforms, making it difficult to effectively understand and target consumers. Experian and Captify’s partnership provides the fuel to help advertisers by integrating real-time search data with identity graphs, allowing for accurate targeting across various channels. By combining Experian’s robust Digital Graph with Captify’s real-time intent data, advertisers can deliver highly personalized ads on connected TV that retain their relevance and impact, no matter where the consumer engages with the content.
“We ingest the Experian Graph as part of our internal Graph, allowing us to connect identifiers together at both person and household levels, which aligns with our expansion into TV, out-of-home, and audio channels.”
Amelia waddington, chief product officer, captify
Addressing identity fragmentation
A fragmented identity occurs when consumer data is scattered across different devices and platforms, making it difficult to effectively understand and target consumers. Advertisers need holistic media plans instead of fragmented strategies that risk disengaging consumers, while publishers must demonstrate their platforms’ value by targeting seamlessly.
By enriching and distributing thousands of demographic and behavioral segments, Experian provides the essential data needed to effectively target diverse audiences. Experian’s Digital Graph complements Captify’s data by connecting various identifiers, providing a complete view of individuals and households. This approach helps advertisers overcome fragmentation challenges, and ensure their messages reach the right audience across multiple touchpoints.
Optimizing creative content dynamically
Using real-time data, advertisers can adjust creative elements of their ads to better match consumer interests. This means changing parts of an ad, like images or text, based on current audience data, making it more relevant to the consumer. By partnering with Experian, Captify continues to see a rounded view of a consumer, allowing them to provide clients around the globe with data-driven creatives. These creatives achieve better results than standard ones and enable more meaningful connections with consumers.
Integrating search data into connected TV
Real-time search data plays a crucial role in enhancing the effectiveness of connected TV (CTV) advertising. Captify’s identity solution uses persistent identifiers from the Experian Digital Graph to extract value from onsite search data. Machine learning technology then categorizes these searches to understand consumer intent and create highly relevant audiences. By integrating Captify’s consumer intent data, advertisers can deliver more targeted and relevant ads on CTV platforms. This integration helps marketers reach viewers with content that resonates.
Ensuring multi-channel message consistency
Consistency in messaging across multiple channels is key for maintaining brand integrity and consumer trust. By using Experian’s identity data, Captify ensures that advertisers can deliver cohesive messages across various platforms, including TV, digital, and radio. This integration not only enhances ad targeting precision but also solidifies the brand’s presence, ensuring that every touchpoint reinforces the same core message for a unified brand experience.
Watch the full Q&A
Visit our Ask the Expert content hub to watch Amelia and Chris’ full conversation. In their discussion, they cover identity beyond identifiers, personalized advertising strategies, and the evolving consumer journey. Amelia and Chris also share about interoperability challenges in CTV and how Captify is using alternative IDs like Unified I.D. 2.0 (UID2).
About our experts
Amelia Waddington, Chief Product Officer, Captify
Amelia is Chief Product Officer at Captify, leading the Product, Engineering, Partnerships and Insight teams globally. During her three years at Captify, Amelia has delivered on her product vision to put Captify’s Search Intelligence in the hands of all advertisers—unlocking competitive advantage for clients and partners in a way that’s omnichannel, strategic, open and future-proof. She has launched Captify’s Advanced TV, cookieless and data partnerships product lines. Amelia brings over a decade of experience in driving product strategy, underpinned by expertise across data science, machine learning, and analytics. She has a PhD in computational neuroscience and previous roles include product leadership at LiveRamp and Aimia.
Chris Feo, SVP, Sales & Partnerships, Experian
As SVP of Sales & Partnerships, Chris has over a decade of experience across identity, data, and programmatic. Chris joined Experian during the Tapad acquisition in November 2020. He joined Tapad with less than 10 employees and has been part of the executive team through both the Telenor and Experian acquisitions. He’s an active advisor, board member, and investor within the AdTech ecosystem. Outside of work, he’s a die-hard golfer, frequent traveler, and husband to his wife, two dogs, and two goats!
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The popularity of flash sale websites with limited time & inventory offerings have grown exponentially over the two years. Online shoppers’ love for the thrill of snagging designer clothing, home décor, travel and even wine have caused visits to the category to increase 368% in July 2011 as compared to the same month two years ago and 109% one year ago. So far in 2011, Nordstrom acquired HauteLook, Amazon entered the fray with MyHabit and recently Saks Fifth Avenue announced the launch of a dedicated flash sale website after offering sale events per week on Saks’ main website. In July 2011, Zulily.com, a website offering sales targeted for women and babies/kids, captured the highest market share of visits at 16%, followed by Ideeli and LivingSocial Escapes. Amazon’s MyHabit ranked 11th, out of the 87 websites in the custom category after only 2 months in operation. Several of the major players over the past six months, the total visits to Ideeli increased 42%, Gilt.com up 14% and Nordstrom’s Hautelook up 8% for July 2011 as compared to February 2011. Total visits for MyHabit jumped 128% for July 2011 as compared to May 2011 when the website launched. The audience for Flash Sales continues to be attractive, and willing to shop – over-indexing against the online population for household incomes over $100k and creditworthy VantageScores of A and B.
The annual back-to-school season is in high gear and Moms are preparing lists and sizing up their children’s clothing and school-related merchandise needs. It’s an important time of year for retailers, as apparel, shoes, electronics, furniture, computers, backpacks and school supplies will account for the bulk of consumer spending during the back-to-school shopping season. Many marketers have historically grouped the back-to-school audience into one collective segment of households with school-age children. This leaves money on the table because there are better ways to target Moms with kids when developing a back-to-school promotional strategy. Just like the inventory of new clothes and notebooks that retailers have neatly arranged on store shelves, families with school-age children come in an assortment of sizes, shapes and colors. What is the most effective way to segment the back to school audience? This begs the question “” Marketers can always turn to basic data elements for segmentation. These include age and gender of children, number of children in the household, parent’s age, household income, and the full spectrum of school classifications (preschool, elementary school, middle school, junior high school, high school, etc.). Though a more powerful approach would be to utilize a segmentation methodology that recognizes the lifestyle and behavioral differences among households that are most likely to contain school-age kids. Here are three snapshots of family-oriented, children-centric market segments that are highly likely to be responsive to a wide variety of back to school promotional offers. All three segments have been selected from Experian’s Mosaic lifestyle segmentation solution. Babies and Bliss Description: Babies and Bliss represent the premier lifestyle for large families in America. With a majority of households containing at least five people, this segment is a haven for large broods living in new suburban subdivisions. Parents in this segment tend to be in their 30s and 40s. There is a wide range of kids in these households, from preschoolers up to those in high school. There is also money in this segment, reflecting the high educations and low six-figure incomes that come from dual earners employed in professional and technical occupations. Some key traits of Babies and Bliss households include upscale tastes, large families, well-educated, conservative views, financially-savvy, convenience, and power shopping. Implications: Given their large families, it's not surprising that Moms from Babies and Bliss households are value-conscious shoppers who seek appealing deals for quality merchandise. They carry coupons, like to comparison shop when buying expensive items and head to the clearance rack first whenever they buy clothes, which tend to be conservative in style. In the mall, these Moms follow their children's lead but also remain very open to consider generic store brands rather than high-priced name brands. They like to shop (it's practically a sport) and are happy to open their wallets at department stores, specialty shops, catalogs and online sites. They especially pride themselves in being very Internet-literate. With their jobs, kids and errands, they appreciate the convenience of shopping online and are receptive to email ads, sponsored Websites and Web page links. Families Matter Most Description: A fast-growing segment, Families Matter Most consists of young, middle-class families in suburban locations leading active, family-focused lives. Nine out of ten households have kids (nearly two-thirds have multiple kids). These young, middle-class families have settled into a landscape of recently built subdivisions. Many adult household members are urban exiles who've sought a suburban setting with room for kids to grow. They are proud of their new homes, schools and shopping centers, where they can find everything they need just a short drive away. Families Matter Most distinguish themselves by having adopted attitudes and routines to help them effectively juggle the responsibilities of work and child-rearing. Some key traits of Families Matter Most households include sprawling families, family values, casual perspectives, price-sensitivity, credit revolvers, conformists and risk avoidance. Implications: Families Matter Most are casual in their attitude except when it comes to their children. They take their role as parents very seriously, which they describe in conservative terms. They avoid risks and feel little need to make a statement with their possessions. As shoppers, Moms from Families Matter Most households are price-sensitive consumers who look for discount stores that offer durable and comfortable fashion. They are worried about spending money impulsively and try to be informed consumers. Most are happy to wear last year's fashions and they tend to zero in on a few stores that carry the affordable brands they prefer. With their growing families they shop most often at discount and mid-market national chains including Target, Walmart, Kohl's, Toys R Us and Old Navy. Cul de Sac Diversity Description: Cul de Sac Diversity consists of ethnically diverse, middle-aged couples with school-aged children. This segment has an above-average concentration of Hispanic and Asian household members. Nearly one-third of Cul de Sac Diversity adult members are foreign-born. They are three times more likely to be bilingual compared to U.S. adults overall. These upper-middle-class households are well on their way to achieving the American dream. They believe in home and family, but also recognize the need to work to get ahead. They look at their work as a career, not a paycheck, and are willing to give up family time in exchange for the opportunity to advance in their careers. Some key traits of Cul de Sac Diversity households include ethnically diverse, bilingual, mainstream mindset, community-minded, tolerant and career-focused. Implications: Moms from Cul de Sac Diversity households like to shop with friends and family members in order to get everyone's opinions on potential purchases. As consumers, they often seek status and recognition through their possessions. They are attracted to designer labels and sometimes spend more on clothes than they can truly afford. They like going to mainstream retailers to shop for their children including Kohl's and Macy's as well as sporting goods chains such as Dick's Sporting Goods and Sports Authority. They are only moderately receptive to online advertising. Deploying a back to school marketing strategy that treats all households with school-age children as one undifferentiated market is like creating a basic lesson plan and applying it to all grade levels of a one-room schoolhouse. Instead, marketers are encouraged to study their target audience more closely. With key insights in hand, they will have acquired the necessary prerequisites for graduating to a strategy that acknowledges the shopping characteristics and needs of a diverse and potentially lucrative audience of back-to-school Moms and their children.
Segmentation Layering For many marketers, segmentation is like breathing – it comes naturally and is a part of everything they do. To better connect with your target audience, use a good segmentation system with multiple layers that provides a breakdown of essential information while tying in lifestyle and transactional data. Consider marketing to parents. The most basic information includes demographics such as age, income, presence of children, etc. Add to that lifestyle information – the family has two working parents who rely heavily on the Internet for research and purchase convenience. The transactional data can really set apart where a parent falls on the parenting lifecycle. For example, is the parent still purchasing diapers and feeding supplies for their infant or bedding, towels and a coffee maker that might indicate their “baby” is headed to college? Both parents may look similar when comparing demographic and lifestyle information but the transactional data differentiates their needs. According to Experian Marketing Services: Parents use the Internet far more than the average American Moms are 34% more likely to buy products online and 33% more likely to participate in a blog than the average adult. "Marketers are targeting more carefully based on both the parents' life stage and consumer behavior,” says Jan Jindra, senior product market manager at Experian Marketing Services. “Younger parents, and those of smaller children, have different information needs than parents of older or college-age children. It's not only the life stage they're in, but the lifestyle," Jindra says. Read the full article and check out the latest in marketing to parents in DMNews: http://www.dmnews.com/household-brands-observe-parents-needs-in-defining-segmentation-tactics/article/205902/.