Acxiom's Big Database; Amazon's Dallaire On Ads; Testing To Differentiate

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The Acxiom Database

The New York Times’ Natasha Singer profiles the data treasure trove that Acxiom manages and continues to grow in a feature titled, “You for Sale: Mapping, and Sharing, the Consumer Genome.” She writes, “Digital marketers already customize pitches to users, based on their past activities. Just think of ‘cookies,’ bits of computer code placed on browsers to keep track of online activity. But Acxiom, analysts say, is pursuing far more comprehensive techniques in an effort to influence consumer decisions. It is integrating what it knows about our offline, online and even mobile selves, creating in-depth behavior portraits in pixilated detail. Its executives have called this approach a ‘360-degree view’ on consumers.” Read more.

Amazon Advertising

Amazon sales veep Seth Dallaire has offered a rare glimpse inside Amazon’s ad sales strategy, including how it packages Kindle inventory with online display and other promotions. Local Onliner’s Peter Krasilovsky covered his remarks during The San Diego Ad Club’s “Interactive Day” event, writing, “The effort to sell ads and offers on Kindle…has been met with derision in some quarters. But Dallaire says it fits in perfectly with all of Amazon’s other efforts. A recent campaign to promote The Lorax film on Amazon, for instance, got the full treatment: A movie trailer for the Kindle Fire, display ads, a cross promotion with the Leap Across America charity, and adjacent promotions for Dr. Seuss traditional book titles.” Read more.

Differentiating The Pitch

Criteo’s Greg Coleman admits to Steve Smith on MediaPost that the Criteo pitch sounds a lot like other pitches: “[Coleman] knows his audience of marketers have heard it all before. [Coleman adds,] ‘I say thanks for your time, and then I will ask them to promise me they won’t listen to anything I am about to tell them. The reason is that I will sound like the last 25 people I came after.'” Read more. You gotta test -whether you’re buying or selling.

Make Mine ‘Premium’

B2B media owner IDG Enterprise is launching a new “premium data services” offering through its IDG Tech Network arm. “Premium Data Services are debuting with two new products utilizing first- and third-party data: Brand Scale (audience reach extension) and Target Scale (more reach extension with third-party data help, presumably look-alikes). Read the release.

Still Supporting RMX

Perhaps Ross Levinsohn is starting to prune the tech or at least aim at where the money is – including Right Media Exchange apparently. WebProNews flags the end of Yahoo! Analytics for ‘analytics only’ customers. On the Yahoo! Web Analytics blog, Emir Kirrane gives some historical context and then says, “We will continue to support this community of Yahoo! Store customers and a limited number of other customers (e.g., Right Media Exchange seat holders) with the same Yahoo! Web Analytics services they know and trust.” Read more.

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Digital Blaspheme Not Really (DBNR)

Using data from Bizo and Epsilon, Direct Marketing News reports that an April Direct Marketing Association survey shows snail mail campaigns outperforming their email brethren. From the article, the DMA is quoted as saying, “‘Direct mail boasts a 4.4% rate, compared to email’s average response rate of 0.12%,’ says Yory Wurmser, director of marketing and media insights at the DMA. ‘Depending on how one crunches the numbers, direct mail has a response rate of up to 10 to 30 times that of email – and even higher when compared to online display,’ Wurmser continues.” Read it. But, email is 4X better than the snail version when it comes to ROI.

Human Targeting Team

A team of Facebook researchers is dedicated to understanding the rhythm of human behavior from data on the social network site according to MIT’s Technology Review. The Review explains, “The group has 12 researchers – but is expected to double in size this year. They apply math, programming skills, and social science to mine our data for insights that they hope will advance Facebook’s business and social science at large. (…) Of all the people at Facebook, perhaps even including the company’s leaders, these researchers have the best chance of discovering what can really be learned when so much personal information is compiled in one place.” Can they take ad targeting to a new level? What’s the impact in understand the behavior equation of not having access to an intent machine like Google search? Read more.

Facebook Success Metrics

On the Hill-Holliday blog, measuring Facebook campaign success is the subject and the reader learns its not one-size-fits-all according to Dan Goldstein. He shares helpings of data and measurement, and serves up, “We really think there is something missing as all of these metrics are designed to drive actions and engagement on Facebook – and aren’t designed to optimize based off a strategic business goal, such as increasing site traffic referrals or leading to an e-commerce purchase. In these cases, there are many actions a user can take that you can argue are more important than a like, comment or share. A few examples are below; however this list is in no way comprehensive. We encourage each marketer to better align social media KPIs to business goals…” Read encouragement.

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