The unspoken secret behind online ‘intent’ segments is that they aren’t actually linked to individual consumers. The segments are a forecasted match to a cluster of browsers and devices identified by cookies. Each ‘person ID’ is the product of a CRM upload for onboarding using email (most of the time), a device ID (for mobile), or a physical address (sometimes) to create a targeting pool for display or social network advertising.
The problem is that the audience building process begins to break down when the emails and addresses start pooling as cookies. Match rates only run at 30% to active browsers, cookie pools are full of duplication for the same user, and unique users are extremely difficult to identify once onboarded — much less matched back to an ad impression or to a purchase after the fact.
This obscuring of audience transparency to attribution metrics is something about which the marketplace is beginning to get impatient. In a recent MediaPost article, 32% percent of marketers cited an absence of transparency as “the biggest factor inhibiting the future growth and scale of programmatic marketing.” A full 74% said that greater transparency would lead them to spend more in programmatic campaigns.
With Semcasting’s Smart Zones, audience transparency and duplication are solved. Semcasting audiences are built from 265 million individuals with over 750 associated data variables. Using IP Targeting, audiences are built based on real people and multi-dimensional variables — including their devices and precise location. Audiences can be linked to impressions and back to the CRM file without duplication or modeling. Deterministic measurement of the audience you build, the audience you get, and the buyers that transact is all possible using Smart Zones.
For more information, download our Matchback and Attribution datasheet.