EBay and Acxiom on Monday forged a partnership to bring Direct Matching services to European advertisers.
“Direct Matching” connects eBay’s transactional-level data with Acxiom’s access to third-party datasets, as well as brands’ own customer and prospective databases to identify potential matches for targeting purposes.
This represents Acxiom’s latest move as it attempts to expand the international footprint of its data-management platform (DMP), Audience Operating System (AOS).
By combining AOS with the eBay ad network, Acxiom can match eBay’s datasets with third-party data sets in a “completely anonymized environment through our Data Safe Haven technology,” which Vihan Sharma, Acxiom’s director of product management for Europe, said adheres to local privacy considerations.
“The folks at eBay understand their own audiences [there are 18 million active users of eBay UK alone] very well, but that intelligence combined with Acxiom data as well as first-party brand or client data makes for a unique opportunity for advertisers to leverage insights they were not able to do so previously,” Sharma added.
Although he declined to identify beta advertisers by name, he said a high-end German car company has a campaign running on eBay using Direct Matching to target potential and existing customers by supplementing its own client segmentations with Acxiom data.
Direct Matching, Sharma claimed, has created a twofold increase in click-through rates. “We are still waiting to close the loop so we can identify what uplift was incurred in offline transactions,” he said. “The results [online] so far have been significant for eBay and the advertiser.”
Acxiom, which has positioned AOS as a cross-platform and cross-device data play, has claimed it can help conquer the online/offline data connectivity challenge. And the company has been aggressive in trying to proliferate its technology. After it launched AOS to US-based agencies and advertisers last fall, Acxiom inked a multiyear partnership with Starcom MediaVest Group in which the media agency would use the DMP for cross-platform and -device ad targeting.
“The way we are positioned across the UK, France, and Germany is we take client data, make it anonymous and then make it available for media agencies and direct advertisers to be able to execute campaigns,” Sharma said.
He added Direct Matching is just one application of AOS that’s currently available, but that additional functionality will follow as Acxiom begins to integrate other AOS modules and apps that are available in the US.
“This is the first step in AOS being very real in Europe,” said Jed Mole, Acxiom’s director of marketing for Europe. “The growth will come in terms of penetrating this market, but we won’t be standing still with AOS, and that will mean more AOS functionality coming to life. EBay is just step one to help marketers and publishers reach their audiences more effectively.”
