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!
Latest posts
As part of our ongoing series which focuses on consumer and marketing trends around major holidays throughout the year, we’ve just released the Father’s Day Hot Sheet. Father’s Day gift-related searches Now that Mother’s Day has come and gone, consumers will be shifting their focus to dad. According to Experian Marketing Services’ Hitwise® online intelligence tool, searches for “Father’s Day” typically start to pop up on Mother’s Day. And searches for “Father’s Day gifts” tend to focus on affordable gift ideas that are personalized, unique and often handmade. In fact, two of the top variations of Father’s Day gift-related searches from 2014 were for “DIY” and “homemade” gifts. While many shoppers wanted the “best” gift for dad, others simply wanted something “cheap” or “last minute.” Finding a gift that dad will appreciate means looking for something that is personalized to him. As such, searches for Father’s Day gifts often contain additional information about the dad or, in many cases, grandpa. Examples commonly used in 2014 were “Christian dad,” “new dads,” “outdoorsy dads” as well dads who are wine or BBQ lovers. While many gift searches include information about the intended recipient, others mention details about the gift-giver or their relationship to the father. Among last year’s variations that included such details, nearly a third focused on gifts that were intended to be given by a “daughter.” Genderless references, such as “kids” or “children” were almost as common. Interestingly, fewer than ten percent were for gifts to be given by a “son.” About a fifth of searches included details about the age of the gift-giver (e.g.: “baby,” “toddler” or “first grader”), while others specified that the gift was to be given by the dad’s wife or girlfriend. Go, go, gadget dad! Gadgets and gizmos are always popular gifts for the techie dad. In fact, during the week immediately preceding Father’s Day last year, visits to Electronics and Appliance websites were up a relative eight percent from two weeks prior. Visits subsequently tapered off the following week. An analysis of search terms driving traffic to the Hitwise Electronics and Appliance industry the week ending June 14 versus May 13, 2014 also sheds some light on the specific items that Father’s Day gift-givers were likely to have been seeking out. Two GPS systems (“Magellan GPS” and “Tom Tom”) were among the top terms that grew search share in the weeks leading into Father’s Day last year. Likewise, “GoPro” appeared in two separate fast growing search terms. Gadgets like these and others listed in the adjacent table may be big gifts for the gadget-loving dad again this year. Gone fishin’ Fishing is a timeless family pastime enjoyed by millions of Americans. According to Experian Marketing Services’ Simmons® National Consumer Study, 28 percent of dads and 26 percent of kids ages six to 17 went fishing last year. As such, it’s no surprise that online searches related to fishing spike over Father’s Day weekend. On the Saturday before Father’s Day in 2014, searches including “fishing” were a relative 28 percent higher than they were the Saturday prior and 64 percent higher than they were the following Saturday. To better understand what kids and dads were seeking out for their fishing plans, Experian Marketing Services conducted an analysis comparing variations of “fishing” searches immediately before Father’s Day last year to those performed two weeks prior. It turns out the word “techniques” was almost 8.6 times more likely to appear in fishing-related searches just before Father’s Day than it was two weeks earlier and “tips” was four times more likely to be used. Likewise, “licenses” was used 2.3 times more frequently, which along with the higher use of “techniques” and “tips” is evidence that many would-be fishermen and women are occasional participants at best. The fact that “charter” and “cabins” were used at higher rates however suggests that other children and/or dads had something in mind beyond a lazy (and likely more affordable) afternoon at the local fishing hole. Gift items, too, like “reels,” “gear” and “tackle” were among those most disproportionately used in searches heading into Father’s Day.
Welcome! Who doesn’t like a warm welcome? Whether your customer is walking into your store or just signed up on your website to receive communications from you, she expects a warm reception. It’s important to make that first impression count. A welcome series helps the conversation open up between the customer and your brand. It sets expectations on the types and cadence of content the customer will receive. Welcome emails also garner 86 percent higher open rates than regular promotional mailings – not too shabby! In a recent webinar, Saks Fifth Avenue shared that they are constantly testing new and current programs to optimize the customer experience. As a result, they discovered that switching from batch-sending welcome emails to sending welcome messages in real time increased open, click and redemption rates significantly. Here’s an example of their welcome series: Saks’ results are consistent with Experian Marketing Services’ welcome email findings which indicate that emails triggered in real time receive up to 10 times the transaction rates and revenue per email vs. those that are batched. A welcome series has also been shown to increase retention by educating customers on new ways to use products and services they’ve purchased from your brand. These emails also can remind customers of the benefits they’ll reap from enrolling in your loyalty programs or credit card. … and welcome back Even if a customer has been welcomed and has interacted with your programs, a day may come when the customer goes silent. Reactivation campaigns are an effective way to get them to re-engage. Naturally, it’s important to target your dormant customers in a variety of channels so you can reach them more effectively. Maybe you’re wondering why I jumped from the warmth of a welcome series right into reality of needing a reactivation campaign. The reason? Marketers need to understand where a customer is in their lifecycle and come full circle with customers if they have parted ways. Marketers can pique the interest of a returning customer by telling them what’s new and reintroducing them to their brand. Carnival® Cruise Lines, for example, sends a welcome-back email that features the newest social networks, offers and deals its customers can take advantage of immediately. At the end of the day, customers expect to receive relevant and engaging messages throughout their entire relationship with a brand. Customer life cycle programs deliver just that. If you’re interested in learning more about welcome campaigns, waitlist/back-in-stock programs and other remarketing strategies, check out our webcast,
In a previous blog entry, Ordering sushi and a lesson in embracing the contextual marketing mindset, I showcased a fictitious scenario that required complex data point integration to pull off. These kinds of programs can seem overwhelming given the three barriers that many organizations face when embarking on their contextual marketing journey: Marketing sophistication A brand’s own conventional mindset and the programs that support it Actionable data Lack of clean and accurate data that prohibits real-time “on the fly” interactions Technology Disparate systems that are unable to link information across repositories, channels and interactions; inability to automate interactions in real-time Regardless of the barriers, there are ways you can show customers you’re listening and provide contextual messages without “boiling the ocean.” Take, for example, the recent viral blue/black vs white/gold dress debate. As the conversation spread throughout Facebook and Twitter, brands like Dunkin’ Donuts and Tide tweeted these contextual messages: The tweets did not go unnoticed as thousands of followers retweeted, commented and favorited these messages. The contextual elements used in these messages — channel preference and breaking/relevant news — are easily accessible to any brand. While the brands had to act swiftly, executing these messages circumvented the three barriers listed above. On the flip side, addressing the barriers can allow a brand to build more sophisticated, targeted contextual messages, as shown in the below example. Here, Experian Marketing Services and technology partner Movable Ink helped Finish Line deliver this sale announcement that adjusts based on the date and time the customer opens the email. The message remains relevant via a countdown clock during the run of the sale, a “warning” when it’s about to end and an alternative message after the sale ends — all of which ensures that the message is relevant regardless of when it’s opened by its intended recipient. And combining more contextual data points, such as location and stock, Finish Line includes the countdown, a local map to the customer’s nearest location and up-to-the-minute inventory of available sizes. Contextual marketing enables modern enterprises to engage in customer-centric conversations that — like any meaningful relationship — deepen across time and future points of engagement. This is particularly true in an era when consumers are overwhelmed by untargeted and disruptive marketing messages. By contrast, contextual marketing is designed to seamlessly and usefully merge into the customer’s daily activity. Want to know more and how to get started? Download the eBook From campaigns to context: Making the move to contextual marketing.