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Tracking pages like ICBMs from USSR

MM: I’d like to run by one scenario that I ran across a while ago. I’d like you to validate or challenge it to the extent that you have anything to say about it. A large car company was spending a tremendous amount of money creating these immersive, virtual-reality movies of their high-end sports car.

Right.

MM: It was clear from the site traffic that it was a very, very popular feature. Yet most of their preliminary research indicated that some 60 or 70 percent of the usage tracked 14-year old boys. The CMO said, “Hey. I’m all for branding the next generation and our share-determining market sector. But at the end of the day, I’ve got cars to move this month. So I’m really need help in correlating investments in not just these expensive immersive multimedia movies and other sorts of rich Internet applications. But across the 4,000 or 5,000 pages of content that I have on my site, which of those pages do 45-year olds with household incomes of greater than $120,000 consume? And why?

Right.

MM: Classic optimization type of question.

Yes.

MM: In this particular case, the engagement agency went to — I think — R Polk. I guess that’s the aggregator of DMV records.

Yes.

MM: So that would be car registration and drivers license records. They then went to a credit database provider. In this case, I think it was Experian — although it could’ve been any of the other credit-scoring data providers. They were able to extract or develop a database of all the households that had — in the last 7 years — bought or leased a Lexus, Cadillac, BMW, Porsche, Audi — a Lincoln, an Infinity and I think there were a couple more brands in there. They then put that into a high-performance database, underlying the website. When people came to this particular auto site, they basically had to put in their name and zip code. They were able to infer with a fairly high level of confidence that Michael Moon does in fact live in Oakland California, and drives a Lexus GS 350. They were therefore able to track my consumption of media, and able to identify the 1,100 or so pages of content and/or media objects that — in this case — a 55-year old who makes more than $225,000 a year — what pages of content I actually consume.

Right.

MM: Do you see practices like that in place today? If not, why not? If so, how has it evolved beyond that basic model that I’ve outlined?

Actually, in terms of my experience — I think that’s probably a little ahead of the curve for most companies. I think frankly, just the fact that they’re even thinking individual consumer-level identifiable and trackable, online engagement is a bit unusual.

However having said that, that’s clearly the direction that we and Alterian believe you have to go, and the market will be moving toward.

I mentioned American Honda is a client of ours. One of the areas that we’ve really — I think — advanced their direct efforts — their relationship efforts — has been in the predictive modeling area.

Again, I think that example you give is probably advanced, relative to most people. But if I were going to criticize or recommend some additional layers, it probably would be more in the targeting and the right-to-win area. Again, we’ve had great success with that in the automotive area.

Maybe it’s not a fair assumption that if it’s a major auto manufacturer, they’d have records or a database — a consumer database — that identifies their current or previous customers.

A lot of what we’ve done for Honda has been compiling — not just, as you mentioned — from 3rd-party available sources, but certainly connecting that to their known customers. Those on their database that have bought cars in the past.

Identifying the ones that are likely, from a predictive modeling standpoint, in-market for a vehicle — or will soon be in market for a vehicle.

Then, which particular car model best fits that consumer’s needs. Predicting, for example, someone who’s more likely to buy a Civic than an Accord.

When it comes to real-time engagement, sorting or ordering the content or the information that the consumer will be able to engage with — based on what they’re most likely to be interested in. To actually just pushing. Let’s say in my example of a Civic versus an Accord — pushing. “Hey. Here’s a Civic-immersive application you can engage with online.”

That’s really — again — if I were going to criticize, recommend or maybe tout the approach that Targetbase would take that’s a little bit different… It would be more around identifying those that are top prospects. Identifying those that you have a right to win with, and then targeting them specifically with custom content, et cetera.–

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