Connected Interactive

Navigating the Complex World of Programmatic Advertising

Hey everyone, Noel Geer here, CEO of Connected Interactive. After 25 years in the advertising industry, I’ve seen it all—the highs, the lows, the pitfalls, and the triumphs. I’m writing this to simply let you know that going forward I will be sharing my lessons and insights for free with you in hopes that I can help you navigate this incredibly complex space and achieve success faster.

The Digital Maze

The Digital Marketing and Advertising space, especially programmatic, can be an incredibly complicated space to navigate. In my 25 years of experience in advertising and over a decade in programmatic (That’s right I started when they called it real-time bidding), I’ve witnessed countless failures and successes. My hope is to help you avoid the pitfalls and run towards success by sharing my knowledge.

Who Can Benefit?

Whether you’re new to the advertising game, a business owner, executive or agency owner — small or large — looking to accelerate your growth, or a marketing professional or even student wanting to arm yourself with knowledge, I will do my best to transfer my years of experience to help you navigate the digital and programmatic advertising space.

Why Share for Free?

For many, working directly with me and my team can be too expensive, so in an effort to impact as many people as possible, I’ve decided to share my knowledge for free in an open forum. If this helps you then I’ve succeeded and maybe one day, we’ll get the chance to work together, but if not, that’s okay too, just enjoy.

The Complexity of Digital Advertising

In the digital advertising space, there are countless factors to consider. Making the right moves, avoiding pitfalls, and truly understanding the industry can make or break a business, a career, or the dreams of an aspiring entrepreneur.

What Will I Share?

I will be sharing information specifically on:

Programmatic Advertising

Audience Architecture and Consumer Data Applications

Mobile and App Marketing

Social Media

Retail Marketing

Advertising Measurement

Personal Growth, Mental, and Physical Health

Entrepreneurial longevity

Personal Growth and Challenges

From a personal growth and entrepreneurial perspective, I’ve overcome numerous challenges that often felt like the world was ending. At some points in my journey, it felt like I was going to lose it all and it took a toll mentally, but finding new ways to approach this game was key for longevity and through it all coming out stronger than ever before. These trials and tribulations have taught me invaluable lessons about what it takes to succeed. I’ve had to reassess many times and pivot to find the right path, and I will share these lessons with you to help you navigate through some of the harder times.

My Commitment to You

So, this is my decree: I promise to serve you with valuable information, and I hope it finds its way into the hands of those who need it. Thanks for joining me on this journey. I can’t wait to share more with you.

Final Thoughts

Here we go!

BOOST. BOND. BRING BACK: Mastering Mobile App Re-Engagement for Maximum ROI

In the ever-evolving digital landscape, re-engagement isn’t just a tactic—it’s the key to long-term success, user retention, and maximizing lifetime value. If you’re not re-engaging your mobile app users, you’re missing out on valuable opportunities.

The Power of Re-Engagement

Retargeting is a term well-known in the digital advertising world, but it’s only one dimension of a comprehensive full-funnel retention strategy for your product. To truly maximize your online investment, a full re-engagement strategy is critical.

The Essential Tactics

The digital world is rapidly evolving and growing, which has an ongoing effect on lifetime value. With so many options available, retaining users has become a significant challenge for brands. Users often download an app, sign up for a service, try it briefly, and if it doesn’t capture their interest, they quickly move on. Alarmingly, about 73% of users abandon an app within the first 90 days. This trend highlights the gap between download rates and actual engagement. Effective re-engagement strategies are the solution.

Real-Life Insights from Mobile App Marketing

To illustrate the importance of re-engagement, let’s look at some statistics:

37% of users engage with a retargeted ad due to the attractiveness of the product.

Cart abandonment rates are reduced by 6.5% through multi-channel re-engagement.

68% of marketing agencies and 49% of individual brands maintain dedicated re-engagement budgets.

Re-engagement has an astounding efficiency rate of 1,046%, outshining other ad techniques.

With 2.24 million apps on the Apple App Store and 2.63 million on Google Play Store, the competition is fierce.

70% of marketers use re-engagement primarily to boost brand awareness.

The 3 B Strategy: Boost, Bond, and Bring Back

1. Boost: Amplifying Your Presence

Email Campaigns: Emails remain a powerful tool for re-engagement. Use email campaigns to highlight new features, special promotions, or useful insights tailored to user behaviour.

Retargeting: Retargeting acts as a gentle nudge, reminding users of their initial interest. With changes reducing the ability to use device IDs for in-app retargeting, email IDs can be used to retarget with video, display, and social ads.

Push Notifications: These can be incredibly effective if used sparingly. They can remind users of tasks, inform them of new features or offers, and trigger actions based on user behaviour.

Note: Be very careful about the frequency you use for emails and push notifications because that is also a way to lose customers by over-messaging them. That’s the beauty of using user IDs to re-engage on advertising channels as you can target them on display, social or video as much as you want without pissing them off.

2. Bond: Strengthening User Relationships

Deep Links: Use deep links in your channels to direct users to specific pages. This increases relevance and improves user experience.

Loyalty Programs: Implement loyalty programs to reward repeat engagement. Offer incentives such as discounts, exclusive content, or early access to new features.

3. Bring Back: Wooing the Lapsed Users

Special Offers: Give lapsed users special deals or access to premium features to reignite their interest.

Feedback Solicitation: Seek feedback from users who have drifted away. This shows that you value their opinion and helps identify areas for improvement.

Advanced Techniques for Re-Engagement

1. Personalized Push Notifications: Utilize data-driven insights to send personalized push notifications as well as triggers based on user behaviour.

2. In-App Messaging: Guide users through the product, offer tips, or highlight new features.

3. A/B Testing: Continuously test different re-engagement strategies to see what works best.

Measuring Success

Key metrics to track include:

User Retention Rate

Churn Rate

Lifetime Value (LTV)

Conversion Rate

Engagement Rate

Final Thoughts

In the digital age, where attention spans are fleeting and options are abundant, it’s not just about acquiring users but retaining them. The art of re-engagement is a framework of connection, resonance, and return. With the « Boost, Bond, and Bring Back » strategy, you can ensure your brand’s message doesn’t fade into the background but resonates with your users. Remember, in product marketing, it’s not just about the first impression but the lasting echo.

Supercharge Your Marketing with Lookalike Audiences

SUPERCHARGE YOUR MARKETING WITH LOOKALIKE AUDIENCES

Your Path to Scaled Success and Enhanced Engagement

After more than a decade in the trenches of digital advertising and adtech, I’ve had the privilege of watching this industry evolve and transform. I’ve seen firsthand how the right strategies can transform campaigns. One of the most powerful tools we have today is lookalike audiences and the ability to enhance them with 3rd party data. So, why is this approach essential for scaling your results and maximizing ROI? Let’s explore.

Harness the Power of Lookalike Audiences

Lookalike audiences are crucial for enriching your user targeting strategy in digital marketing campaigns. They offer multiple benefits that can significantly boost your campaign performance:

Enhanced Targeting Precision: Reach new users similar to your existing high-value customers, reducing ad spend wastage.

Increased ROI: Higher likelihood of conversions, optimizing ad spend for better returns.

Expanded Campaign Reach: Enter new markets by targeting similar user segments.

Efficient Use of Data: Leverage existing customer data for informed targeting decisions.

Deeper Connection with Target Users: Deliver tailored, relevant ad messaging, improving user engagement and experience.

Continuous Campaign Improvement: Dynamically refine and update audiences based on new data and feedback.

Competitive Advantage: Gain an edge by effectively reaching potential customers before competitors.

Cross-Channel Consistency: Ensure a unified targeting strategy and brand messaging across multiple marketing channels.

Creation of Lookalike Audiences: Build from Quality Seed Data

Start with rich, scalable, and accurate seed data (e.g., hashed emails from your subscriber list). The quality of your lookalikes depends on the quality of your seed data. This data can feed directly into marketing platforms, helping you target users who resemble your best customers, driving campaign efficiencies and increasing ROI.

High Quality and Relevance: Direct user connection ensures specific and relevant data, containing high-quality information from engaged subscribers or customers.

Effective Targeting: Behavioral insights tied to user behaviors like purchase history and engagement. Customer segmentation allows for precise targeting based on user interactions.

Data Accuracy: Consistent updates by users maintain the accuracy and relevance of the email list.

Supercharging Lookalike Audiences

Enhance your lookalike audiences by blending them with additional behavioral signals, such as purchase data (e.g., Moneris transactional signals from Canada’s largest POS provider) or psychographic data (demographic, brand, and retail affinity). This approach, known as Audience Architecture, ensures you target users with the right behaviors for conversion.

Why is it Important to Further Enhance Lookalikes with Additional Quality Data?

While emails are powerful, combining them with other types of data can create even more effective lookalike audiences. Here are some data sources to consider:

Transactional Data:
- Purchase History: Identifies high-value customers based on buying patterns.
- POS Data: Adds depth to understanding customer behaviors.

Demographic Data:
- Age, Gender, Location: Helps understand broader customer characteristics.

Psychographic Data:
- Interests and Preferences: Provides insights into lifestyles and values for personalized targeting.
- Brand Affinity: Guides more effective audience creation.

Behavioral Data:
- Website and App Activity: Indicates user engagement and intent.
- Social Media Engagement: Highlights interests and behaviors of potential customers.

Life Lessons in Lookalike Audiences

Early in my career, I worked on a campaign for a client who was determined to lower their CPA at all costs. We focused heavily on minimizing expenses, only to find that our conversions were low-quality and often didn’t justify the cost. It was a classic race to the bottom.

In another instance, we used high-quality seed data from engaged customers for a different client. By creating lookalike audiences, we saw a significant improvement in engagement and conversions. The campaign’s success reaffirmed the importance of starting with quality data and focusing on user engagement.

Creating lookalike audiences from carefully sourced seed data and enhancing them through Audience Architecture is a powerful way to drive and scale results. By focusing on users with the right behaviors for conversion, you can maximize your marketing efforts and achieve significant growth.

One thing I’ve learned in my years in this industry is that the quality of your audience can make or break a campaign. Start with quality data, refine continuously, and always aim for deeper engagement. These strategies have helped my clients succeed time and again, and I’m confident they can work for you too. If you have any questions or need further insights, feel free to reach out.

Here’s to your marketing success!

Why Smart Data Buying is the Key to your Success in Programmatic

WHY SMART DATA BUYING IS THE KEY TO YOUR SUCCESS IN PROGRAMMATIC

Hey there! If you’re in the digital advertising game, you know how crucial it is to have a solid audience strategy. One of the biggest pieces of that puzzle is understanding how to buy data the right way. By focusing on data transparency and knowing exactly where your data comes from, you can supercharge your campaigns and cut down on wasted spending.

Lessons from the Trenches

Over the years, I’ve seen just about everything in this industry. One story that stands out involved a supplier who sold US credit card data to a partner running Canadian ads. Yep, you read that right. When we told them what they had been buying from another supplier for 2 years we had to pull in a VP from the cc company to prove to them what we already knew. This is a valuable lesson: always be vigilant and insist on transparency in data buying and pick your partners well. Lastly, support Canadian suppliers for Canada!

Understanding the Data Landscape

The programmatic and digital media buying world is full of options for buying consumer data. At first glance, all those targeting choices might seem like a dream come true. But, if you don’t scrutinize the data, you could end up paying for nothing. Understand the source of the data and how the audience was created. If something doesn’t make sense, ask more questions. As they say, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.

Probabilistic vs. Deterministic Data

It’s also important to understand the difference between probabilistic and deterministic data.

Probabilistic data is like casting a wide net. It involves gathering data points from various sources and using data science to expand a small audience into a larger one. For example, you might start with a segment of 22,000 people and grow it to 1.5 million by finding similar profiles and using machine learning to identify other similar users.

On the other hand, deterministic data comes straight from the source and gives you exact user signals linked to specific actions. Think of it like intent data from search behaviors—people actively looking for what you offer, making them prime targets for your ads. Another good example is purchase data, which allows you to understand spending patterns at the level of your product.

Finding the Sweet Spot

Deterministic data is super precise but can be combined with probabilistic data to refine it into a more valuable audience.

For instance, blending deterministic transactional data with affinity or behavioral data (probabilistic) can create highly targeted audience segments. This mix helps you pinpoint the most valuable users within a larger group, ensuring your ads reach the right people for a great ROI while still being scalable.

Demand Transparency

Here’s a golden rule: always demand transparency about where your data comes from. If the data’s origin is murky or hard to understand, it’s probably not worth your investment. Quality data is the foundation of effective campaigns, allowing you to use AI tools and measurement techniques to optimize and continually improve your results.

Unlocking Programmatic Potential

Great audience data is your ticket to unlocking the full potential of programmatic advertising. By following smart data buying practices and insisting on transparency, you can drive growth, optimize your media spend, and achieve precise, large-scale targeting. This approach helps you avoid waste and maximize your ad spend return.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for more tips and insights on making your programmatic strategies even better.

Maximize your Ad Revenue by Prioritizing Engaged Leads

MAXIMIZE YOUR AD REVENUE BY PRIORITIZING ENGAGED LEADS

Engaged leads and lifetime value create more profitable conversions compared to trying to drive down your CPA (cost per acquisition) too early and relying solely on last-click metrics.

Lessons from 25 Years in Advertising

In my 25 years in the advertising industry, I’ve seen many campaigns go off the rails by focusing too narrowly on CPA from the start. On the flip side, I’ve seen amazing results from campaigns that defined and focused on the stages of the customer journey to a qualified sale.

What is a Qualified Sale?

A qualified sale is when you acquire a customer who provides a high ROI based on their lifetime value. This ensures the best rate of return on your marketing efforts.

The Pitfalls of Focusing Solely on CPA to Early

Unless you’re already a big, trusted brand, focusing entirely on CPA too early can lead to a race to the bottom. You may end up acquiring lower-value customers who don’t cover the cost to acquire them. This can trap you in a cycle of lowering your CPA and diminishing your returns.

Additionally, you end up focusing all your attention on the lower funnel instead of ensuring your entire funnel or Pipeline remains healthy and keeping growing. When you do this the well runs dry cause you have not been filling it and you could end up in a place that’s impossible to come back from before you realize what you have done.

Why Engagement Matters

Think about it: Have you ever clicked on an ad for a new product and bought it immediately? Probably not. Most consumers click on an ad multiple times before committing to a purchase or providing their information. This is why focusing on engagement is crucial. Here’s why:

Qualified Customers: By focusing on those who show genuine interest, you build an audience of engaged leads. This is the quickest route to gathering quality data that you can optimize your campaign towards.

Behavioral Insights: Identifying visitors who engage with your product or site helps you understand their interest. Scaling this first fills your funnel with potential customers you can continue to engage and eventually convert. This is a healthy Pipeline or Funnel.

Scalable Data: This approach allows you to build robust models that you can optimize within channels like YouTube, Display, Video, and Social Media.

Optimizing for Engaged Leads

Optimizing for engaged leads ensures higher-quality customers with better long-term value. Engaged customers:

Have higher lifetime value.

Provide more meaningful feedback.

Contribute to a more robust and profitable sales funnel.

Measuring Long-Term Value

For long-term success, focus on a combination of engagement, efficient CPA, and lifetime value:

The Right CPA: For example, a $50 CPA for a customer who spends $1,000 has almost 10 times the ROI compared to a $10 CPA for a customer with a $100 lifetime spend. ROAS of $950 vs $90. Which customer would you rather acquire?

Beware of Last-Click Attribution

Using Google Analytics and only looking at the last click that drove the conversion can lead you astray. For instance, if you found users with great targeting solutions from Channel A but they converted through Channel B, Google Analytics might mislead you to cut out Channel A, which was actually crucial in the initial engagement and building a good lead pool.

Use Organic Lift as a Quality Measure

This is a great tool to measure the quality of conversions in the short term. By comparing lifts and dips in organic traffic, engagement, and conversions across different channels, you can gauge the quality of your traffic and whether your strategies will lead to long-term success and growth.

Final Thoughts

While CPA is a valuable metric, it shouldn’t be the sole focus of a campaign. By prioritizing engaged leads and using effective channel strategies and data across programmatic, social media, and video, you can drive more profitable sales and achieve long-term success.

Unlocking the Power of Purchase Data for Advertising

UNLOCKING THE POWER OF PURCHASE DATA FOR ADVERTISING

Hello everyone, Noel Geer here, CEO of Connected Interactive. After 25 years in the advertising industry, I’ve embarked on a mission to share my knowledge and insights with you. Today, I want to talk about one of the most powerful tools in digital advertising: purchase data. Let me take you on a journey of how to effectively use third-party purchase data to transform your advertising strategy and drive results.

My Journey with Purchase Data

Have you considered or tried using third-party purchase data to increase the profitability of your advertising? Over the years, I’ve heard countless clients and partners express how crucial purchase data could be in driving their advertising results. It’s taken a good decade to figure this out for the Canadian market—not just obtaining the data, but also learning how to properly use it.

Today, we’ve developed a database of consumer spending that accounts for around 40% of card purchases in Canada, excluding cash transactions. We use a process called Audience Architecture, blending this transactional data with other consumer behaviors to create precise audiences for digital ad targeting.

The Early Days

Back in 2014, my obsession with purchase data began. We were deep into the mobile space, building software for mobile apps to help clients understand mobile behavior and track retail visits. But I kept thinking, if we could get the purchase data across multiple stores, we could complete the loop.

Then, Mastercard came along, trying to figure out how to sell their credit card data in Canada to marketers. They couldn’t do it the same way as in the US, so we stepped up. Fast forward nearly a decade, and we’re now working with credit card, debit card and even mobile payment data from over 350,000 POS terminals with Moneris, covering about 40% of card transactions in the country. We’ve been testing and experimenting with purchase data for years, and we’ve finally cracked the code on how to use it effectively for digital advertising.

The Benefits of Purchase Data: A Goldmine for Advertisers

Using purchase data can transform your advertising strategy. Imagine targeting the top 25% of buyers in your category—those most likely to convert and bring in the highest return. Studies have shown that this can increase the profitability of your ad spend 100-fold over time. But here’s the catch: this isn’t intent or low-funnel data. You need to approach it properly to reap the benefits.

Sage Advice

Here’s how purchase data can help you move the needle, and how to properly measure and implement it:

Increase Your Marketing Profitability: Identify the people who spend the most or most often in your category. Imagine spending 80% of your budget on the 20% of consumers who provide a higher return on investment. However, remember that it won’t cost less to acquire them, and they won’t necessarily convert right away. Use purchase data to drive more valuable engaged customers, filling your funnel with high-paying users who will increase profitability over time.

The Power of First-Party Data: While third-party purchase data is super valuable, first-party data helps make informed decisions. Often, there isn’t enough first-party data to power a full strategy, but it can guide how to utilize third-party data for greater scale.

Why Offline Purchase Data is Important: In Canada, offline purchases still account for over 80% of retail transactions. Privacy compliance means purchase data must be stored based on households at the 6-digit postal code level and the only way to target at that level is via lat longs mapped to the households. We’ve mapped over 40 million mobile devices to households to ensure precise targeting while taking advantage of a vast amount of offline data points. This data can also be integrated with online contextual data to drive even more power combining online and offline behaviours.

Final Thoughts

After nearly a decade of experimenting and testing with purchase data, we’ve found success by blending it with other data points through a process we call Audience Architecture. This process has received amazing feedback from some major brands and we’re only getting started 😁.

Here’s to your success in making the most out of purchase data. I hope you found this helpful and insightful. If you did, please share it so others can benefit from this knowledge. Let’s help ensure everyone has access to the information they need to succeed in digital advertising.

Moneris and Connected Interactive Partner to Bring Retail Purchase Data to Canadian Marketers

Toronto, May 25th 2022

Moneris, the leading provider of retail payment processing in Canada, and Connected Interactive, a leading Canadian supplier of custom audiences for the digital marketing ecosystem, today announced a new partnership to bring highly coveted retail audience data to the Canadian advertising industry. Through CI, with exclusive representation from JSquare2 agency in the Quebec market, Moneris retail purchase audiences will be accessible to Canadian marketers in a collaboration that has been anticipated and desired by the Canadian marketing industry for quite some time.

“A deeper understanding of audiences and more informed marketing decisions all begin with having the right data at your fingertips,” says Sanjeev Chib, Managing Director of Spendscape, Moneris’ data solutions subsidiary. “Our partnership with CI is an exciting step forward in applying Moneris’ data to the world of digital advertising, bringing data within reach of marketers, and helping them see the retail landscape more clearly.”

This partnership ensures that now there is finally a tailor-made, 360 degree view of the Canadian retail purchase landscape specifically designed for the current Canadian digital advertising ecosystem, that covers all major credit and debit transactions as well as newer forms of payment such as Apple Pay and Google Pay.

“We consider this partnership to be a perfect fit for us as we aim to provide our clients and partners with transparent and effective purchase data to drive growth and makes CI the largest provider of purchase data for the digital advertising industry in Canada”, noted Noel Geer, CI’s chief executive and founder.

“With hundreds of different categories covering purchase behavior amongst Canadian consumers from coast to coast, this is the most comprehensive set of audiences available for retail behavior in Canada available to digital marketers and has been anticipated for some time”, noted founder and president Lyle Wagner.

The audiences were created as a unique 2 year collaboration between CI’s engineering, operational team and Moneris product team and data scientists to create a customized unique set of audiences designed specifically for the unique privacy requirements of the Canadian market.

This ensures that marketers using this data can be assured of adherence to Canadian privacy regulations, as well as the highest level of industry know-how and experience in utilizing purchase data for marketing purposes thanks to Moneris’ peerless position within the Canadian financial industry and CI’s years of deep experience successfully working within these parameters for the benefit of Canadian marketers. Moneris audiences will be available soon as a managed service and later will be available in CI’s DataDesk.io platform, the leading self-serve audience buying platform for digital advertising in Canada.

Connected Interactive is Canada’s leading independent provider of digital advertising audience and media buying solutions through managed service or DataDesk.io, as well as providing mobile app marketing services and consulting covering operations and technical development through CI Tech Labs.

About Moneris

Moneris is Canada’s largest provider of innovative, unified solutions for mobile, online and in-store payments, processing more than one in three transactions. Serving businesses of every size and industry, Moneris offers hardware, software and solutions to help transform the way businesses grow and operate, in payments and beyond. For more information please visit www.moneris.com and follow @moneris.

Retail Media the next big trend in digital advertising with massive revenue opportunities

First, what is Retail Media? The best way to describe is the Shopper Marketing version of digital advertising, where brands use in-store promotions to drive sales in close proximity to where the consumer actually buys their product. So, you can imagine the appeal for brands who spend significantly on this type of advertising to access a retailer’s 1^st party sales data for accurate measurement and targeting.

Access to this data is driving massive growth in retail media, which is of huge value in the advertising data landscape and is the most robust way to target lower-funnel consumers vs. top and mid-funnel advertising, which is moving to more of an aggregated data model (cohorts).

Larger retail platforms have created walled gardens where advertisers can work inside this environment using data from retailer consumer data platforms ( CDPs ), but no user data leaves. Advertisers can target users based on their purchase behaviour and other prediction signals, which are an extremely efficient way to target digital spending.

In terms of players, Amazon is the 50 foot giant of course, launching an entire advertising suite including Amazon DSP ( Demand Side Platform), but Walmart has been doing this for some time and was an early adopter in developing an ad platform for the digital space. Now we have large retailers following the trend: Lowes, Target, Kroger, Home Depot and more in just two short years. In Canada, Loblaws is leading the charge, with other major retailers on the way.

In the travel space, now we see Marriot launching their own advertising platform with this trend pollinating into other verticals. Travel is one of the largest categories in both online spending and web searches, so this feels like a natural evolutionary step. Utilizing a massive amount of data and leveraging the role they play in a customer’s business or personal travel, Marriot has the advantage over even a behemoth like Google. They can drive an entirely new revenue source while at the same time improving their customer experience with app features like wireless keys and concierge services that book dinner reservations plan tours etc. It’s a beautiful marriage of monetizing data to improve user experience as social networks have been doing for more than a decade now.

Pitfalls to ponder…

How will the user experience be connected across all these channels so you can properly measure and plan the user journey?

How will a brand measure the sales that come from these networks?

A consumer does not buy your product from seeing one ad but considers it through a combination of awareness and engagement and that last push needs to be measured as part of an entire journey or advertisers could end up missing the real opportunity to drive sustainable growth.

This is the same issue brands face when using outdated last click attribution models before purchase or online conversion. If you end up spending all your dollars on the last click or last impression you will ultimately fail and never be able to really grow.

Advertisers need to be careful not to fall into the trap of giving all the credit to that last engagement and properly measuring the journey utilizing omnichannel measurement to achieve ultimate success. Once Google’s next evolution of the cookie is revealed the game will change, but either way Shopper Marketing and Retail Media will still have a whole new face. Brands will have even more channels to consider as they try to understand where to spend and balance their finite ad dollars and understand the part that each channel plays in the overall success of sustainable and incremental growth.

Targeting Users at Home and Work: What the Walled Gardens and DSPs Aren’t Telling You

What is the most relevant signal in terms of proximity? In mobile advertising many are familiar with the idea of geofencing a radius based on proximity, with less aware of polygon targeting actual visitors to the location itself. A signal we hear less about is proximity to work and home. What does that mean and what is the difference?

Geo fencing is based on targeting a device within a defined area (the “fence”) in proximity to a specific location (such as a store), while targeting users at work or home is based on where they actually live or work in proximity to that store.

Why does this matter?

When you are trying to influence consumers, what is more important: they are in a location in that moment or targeting them in a location where they spend most of their time? We know it takes multiple touch points to influence consumers, so it’s important to apply reach and frequency along with location. To which you might say, ‘Ok sure, but I can already do that in my DSP, thank you very much.’

To which I would say, ‘Well actually, you can’t.’

When targeting in any digital platform such as Google Ads, Facebook, or a DSP you can apply filters like postal code targeting, yet these filters have limitations:

1. Targeting is limited to the first 3 digits of a postal code (Called FSA – about 8,000 Households) not the entire 6 digit postal code (12 to 18 households), a huge difference.

2. In Canada, the most robust, privacy compliant data segments are 6-digit postal code. (For example, Environics has over 24,000 6-digit postal code segments).

Ok, so it turns out digital platforms need a tool to do this level of targeting. How does this work?

Some use IP address to resolve to the 6 digit level, but IP addresses are extremely inaccurate, and Google for one is planning to take them out soon, with pressure from the GDPR and major lawsuits in Europe over privacy violations. With G4,the new version of Google Analytics, IP address will not be included as a tracked parameter.

With privacy compliance in mind, Connected Interactive uses mobile device IDs with GPS coordinates that allow marketers to understand a devices home postal code from a month or two of activity, which adheres to privacy laws while proving to be a scalable solution. And with 28MM verified mobile devices, we can then cross device target and expand to a larger channel mix.

With our device-level data linked to postal codes we are then able to tie in purchase behavior from Moneris’ POS systems, credit card data and a massive amount of household behavior that can then be augmented with other online attributes. Addressable TVs have a bright future using this type of data and even flyers are making a comeback as part of an omnichannel strategy – not that they ever left, really.

In the end, with new privacy compliance laws and the resulting changes to platforms and technology, how we think of 3rd party data and measurement will evolve, but 6-digit postal code targeting will remain an incredible source of information that can be used to understand consumer behavior and utilized for more accurate data mapping and user targeting driving increased sales, purchase volume and more.