AXA uses EE mobile data to microtarget outdoor ads
AXA is using multiple strands of location-based data alongside EE’s data on outdoor smartphone usage to microtarget ads to potential consumers.
The insurance firm says the “game-changing” approach to planning out-of-home advertising will reach decision makers for SMEs, a typically difficult group to reach, by identifying ‘hotspots’ of mobile usage near poster sites.
Brands including Lenovo and British Gas have been trialing the technique since the start of the year in partnership with Posterscope in an attempt to understand how mobile devices can pep up the performance of outdoor campaigns. AXA’s effort, which uses multiple location based data, is being served at scale.
Target areas are initially being established by merging AXA’s own postcode records of SMEs together with industry statistics sourced from the Inter Departmental Business Register to form a map of potential areas. It is then overlaid with insights from Posterscope’s audience panel, data from industry planning tool Route and EE’s mData unit – which tracks the mobile usage habits of audience groups – to identify the most relevant locations before skewing ad placements to mobile hotspots.
AXA says the approach opens the opportunity to identify target audiences through the business contracts EE hold – where by there is less than 10 contacts on the contract – allowing them to infer it’s an SME. Additionally, it can now drill further down into evaluating metrics such as awareness building and sales.
Chris Jones, head of brand and online at AXA UK, says the Havas-planned initiative is part of a wider play to adopt more innovative ways of targeting consumers through data and insight.
It brings into sharp focus a paradigm shift across the outdoor advertising industry whereby brands are using data to target people more effectively by proximity in real-time.
Lenovo ran a two-week promotion for its Yoga Pro 2 tablet in March to reach people in areas where they were actively researching gadget purchases on their smarpthones. Outdoor ads pushed to those hotspots sparked a 200 per cent increase in both ad awareness and purchases consideration, Lenovo claims. Online searches jumped by 150 per cent, the business adds.
