Nielsen Forms Alliances to Combine Offline and Online Data

It's no surprise that behavioral data is key to ad effectiveness.

By Ava Seave
03/16/2010 -09:11 AM

Nielsen’s latest efforts to combine behavioral and purchase data with demographic data through its alliance with eXelate is indicative that many companies are just now cottoning to what circulators have known for decades: purchase behavior combined with basic demographic knowledge trumps everything in predicting future purchase.

The reason this is news lies in the fact that Nielsen is combining offline data with online data to benefit an online ad sales effort. What is also a neat trick is that the service will also include data from all the best overlay sources, including their own research arm, the Census Bureau, MRI and Simmons. Circulators should be lining up to test this service and others, such as BlueKai, for ads to extend and refine their own successes with online sub sales.

Nielsen’s alliance with Facebook called Brandlift uses a very low level of behavior—joining a brand or company “fan page,”—and combining that information with demographics and a short opt-in surveys of those fans’ intent to buy.

How much more powerful and effective does behavioral information make advertising? A pal of mine with deep knowledge of the field has compared advertisements on “high engagement” sites—and by this he means high quality editorial, professionally produced content. He estimates that an advertisement that is served selectively based on behavioral information is four to six times more likely to be clicked on than an ad served non-selectively with no behavioral information.

Ava Seave is a Principal of Quantum Media, a strategy and marketing consulting group.