Targeting and stages of human life

The most relevant approach to behavioral targeting is to give all or almost all attention to what people are looking for and viewing online. Although this is an important first step, a truly customized, high-precision targeting requires you to dive deeper, exploring new ways to pose a question and find an answer to why and how certain consumer segments differ in their search behavior, as the head of WhitePages.com, Susie Kang.

Behavioral Insider: What exactly is different about your approach to using behavioral data?

Suzy Keng: The biggest misunderstanding of what I’m seeing right now in the field of work with behavior is that people think that if you have people who are looking for cars, then all you need to know about them is that they need a car. This alone says a lot. A much more important question arises only later - why are they looking for cars? Because if you know more about individual segments within the vast world of people who google cars, you will know much more about how to target them, what type of cars they are interested in, how often to deliver them and, of course, where they can be supply more. For this, it is necessary to consider their search for a car in a wider context.

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BI: And how do you do it?

Keng: Well, people, as a rule, completely neglect and do not appreciate the fact that in the case of online targeting in general and behavioral in particular, besides data on user activity directly on the site, there are also a lot of consumer data from third-party studies, which You can overlay your own data on user behavior online and thus reach a whole new level of understanding.
One of the valuable resources, in this sense, is NielsenNetRatings. What Nielsen did is to study how people at different demographic “life stages”, the so-called, in fact, represent very special groups in terms of patterns of online behavior, depending on where they are in their life path. .

BI: Tell us a little more about what this stage of life study includes and how its results are applied? How is a demographic typology related to a specific behavior?

Keng: We have more than 15 million categories for business search, in general, we have a powerful mechanism for vertical search data. We are committed to using this data according to Nielsen profiles and grouping them into different categories. And there, in fact, there are powerful correlations. Well, let's say, an interesting point is that people belonging to one of the segments of the life stages, called “New Families” (New Families) - those who already have their first child - are much more likely to google cars than people from other groups.

BI: A very intriguing relationship, but how exactly can this help an advertiser who wants to expand his targeting capabilities?

Keng: As soon as you find a steady correlation between certain patterns of search activity and life-cycle segments, you get the opportunity for more accurate targeting. Take the example of the “New Family” that I just mentioned. As soon as you learned that users belonging to the "New Families" make up a significant part of car buyers, namely, the part of the market that relates to family cars and minivans, keywords such as "Baby Stroller" or "Toy Shop" or " Children's books ", take a completely new meaning for the auto marketer. Such a train of thought can be developed further. Knowing that someone is not just looking for cars, but demonstrates his affiliation with “New Families” with his search pattern, insurance companies can advertise not only auto insurance, but also life insurance. Or a financial company, which, in addition to the fact that it can simply advertise a car loan, can also target users from New Families as candidates for a home loan.

BI: Is it possible, in your opinion, to apply a similar approach outside this particular area?

Keng: We compare our data with some of the main Nielsen lifecycle categories. For groups such as Empty Nesters, people whose children have matured and went to college, or Mature Families, who have a few children, have their own special online search patterns that advertisers can use for identification and targeting. Once you have identified a stable behavioral pattern and its segment, the advertiser will have the opportunity to reach the consumer from the target group while he is in the relevant search category or retarget him to another search category based on a strict correlation with the needs of his current lifecycle.

BI: Do you think that the growing use of segmentation will expand the boundaries of the market for behavioral targeting among those advertisers or others who shun PT?

Keng: One of the main tasks of behavioral targeting today is to get its application curve up. Since behavioral advertising costs more than usual, among many advertisers there is a perception that the use of behavioral targeting means greater risk. But the fact is that the more accurate the segmentation of individual behavioral patterns within the framework of demography, the greater the effect can be achieved in relation to highly specialized purchases. To understand the depth of the targeting tasks, you must first understand that behavioral targeting does not mean that you will have to go backwards for everyone who views your product category.

BI: What other new developments could you name that would be especially important to you in the next few months?

Keng : We consider what we are doing now with lifecycle segmentation as a starting point. Looking to the future, we believe that there are many ways to improve the use of collected data on segmentation of behavior. For example, we are working on the idea of ​​identifying and segmentation of specific geographic segments based on characteristic behavioral patterns. Similarly, you can be drilled into the behavioral features of different user segments that display search activity at different times of the day. In general, we can say that there is no limit to perfection and you can improvise as much as you like with the segmentation of behavior.

Translation from English to:
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