We live in an age of consumer empowerment. Ordering a cab, renting a hotel room or creating a playlist of your favourite songs has never been faster or easier. Brands like Amazon, Spotify and Airbnb are intelligently using consumer data and disrupting their respective industries with consumer-led products and services.
However, with high-level data breaches from the likes of Yahoo, Equifax and eBay over the past couple of years, as well as the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal, consumers are recognising that their data is being mishandled or even misused. In combination with the poorly targeted or intrusive advertising experiences, consumers are left feeling that they need to protect themselves by using tools such as ad blockers or alternatively boycotting these media channels altogether.
eMarketer predicts that ad blocker usage will reach 30.1% in the US this year and research from Pureprofile indicated that over a quarter of users this year either deleted or changed their Facebook settings (see the full report here).
These actions pose serious threats for marketers and media companies who rely heavily on consumer data and digital channels to engage their existing and future customers.
Earning back consumer trust with declared data
Marketers can win back the trust of consumers by offering a more compelling and personalized advertising experience. Understanding your audience is the key to success, but unfortunately, there are often gaps in the data that marketers and their agencies use. By using declared data, marketers can fill in the data gaps to better understand their audience and make smarter decisions around targeting and ad creative.
Declared data is derived from asking consumers a series of questions, usually through a survey, to which they freely answer. Through this engagement with consumers you can uncover declared intent, interest, psychographic profiles and actions that someone plans to take. It also helps you to eliminate those individuals that don’t actually fit the profile.
By incorporating a declared data strategy into the media planning and buying process, marketers and their agencies can uncover the exact target customer profile for more effective media campaigns that consumers will love.
Declared data in action
Declared data can also help you to create more niche customer profiles and segments for personalized media targeting. Let’s imagine that you are a pet care brand and you want to promote your new dog food. You have plenty of options out there to target dog owners, be that contextual targeting or taking a segment from your DSP or DMP.
Where declared data adds value is by enriching that data with the specific dog breed that the owner has. This is done by engaging dog owners with a short questionnaire where they can declare that breed, then armed with that data you can serve them a specific ad matching the breed they selected. This level of personalization and data-driven marketing makes it easier to seize the consumer’s attention and creates a more meaningful connection with your brand.
You might also look to declared data to uncover a specific mindset or psychographic profile. E.g. Finding people who are in the market for a home loan, but who are more risk averse. Much of the time these audiences can only be uncovered by engaging the consumer in a two-way dialogue.
Marketers now have a better data solution
The market research industry has relied on this two-way dialogue with consumers for years to help brands build the right products, test market appetite and gather insights. Now as declared data becomes more widely available, in market and in DMPs, marketers can turn rich survey data into addressable audiences.
By engaging empowered consumers with a declared data strategy, marketers can drive more relevant and effective advertising campaigns that (re)builds trust and cultivates loyalty with consumers.
Click here to find out how you can harness the power of declared data with Pureprofile.
