At this year's ad:tech, targeting tech company Semcasting demonstrated how it combines online and offline data to improve geotargeting for direct marketing campaigns. The company's secret is IP Zones, which differentiates the company from other geotargeting firms.
In its essence, IP Zones are regions that Semcasting has identified through its collection of data. Semcasting promises it can reach over 90 million demographic segments as defined by over 750 data variables, allowing advertisers to hypertarget ad units according to the needs of an individual campaign. Semcasting has produced these IP Zones by identifying over 225 million consumers and almost 19 million businesses throughout the country, which it has divided according to its own proprietary data analysis.
As a result, Semcasting says it can offer higher click-through rates than the industry average across several verticals. For instance, it cites the industry real time bidding average CTR of .06 percent for political ads and a .08 percent average CTR for trading desks. Semcasting says it can improve CTRs by 69 percent to an aggregate CTR average of .10 percent thanks to its IP Zones proprietary targeting.
Semcasting also promises to offer higher lift for other verticals, such as finance (93 percent), auto (96 percent) and education (204 percent).
Semcasting offers these improved clicks by targeting according to four major variable categories: buying behavior, household data, affluence indicators and real property. Inside each of these categories, audiences can be targeted even further according to various datasets. For instance, affluence can be further defined by net worth data, charitable contribution data, income ranges or other indicators that can allow campaigns to target more specifically. These indicators are used to target advertisements more specifically by using offline data to target online ads more effectively.
At this year's ad:tech, several firms discussed the importance of greater targeting capabilities as click-through rates remain low and competition from an ever-growing array of media (mobile, social media, TV, broadcast, search). Semcasting is one of several firms looking at how to combine the two to offer more precise targeting tools to agencies and media buyers alike so that their campaigns can offer a higher ROI, lower accidental click-throughs and more effectively reach audiences that matter.
Allvoices.com article: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/13407356-semcasting-offers-ip-targeting-solutions
Ray Kingman : May 21, 2014
