Better Customer Targeting Through Greater Understanding

Linda Dupree, CEO of Nielsen Catalina Solutions, has seen it all, research-wise from, as she noted, “Agency, advertiser and then research supplier.” Dupree and Chief Research Officer, Leslie Wood, have worked together for a long time and together they are a formidable force in the field of sales data analytics. 

Now, as Nielsen Catalina is about to celebrate its tenth anniversary, they have doubled down with efforts to further improve the measurement of CPG purchasing through the consumer funnel.

Measuring CPG on a More Sophisticated Level

Dupree believes that, “In an environment that is increasingly focused on outcomes, NCS is the sweet spot in the CPG market.” While her company initially started in the traditional forms of audience measurement, “increasingly we do targeting, optimization, and eventually we will move more into predictive measurement (applications).”

For Wood, who has been with NCS for eight years, “the company started with overall measurement and targeting and recognizing from the first, the incredible capacity and value of the data.” She added that even years ago, there were multiple sources for every piece of data which made it very useful to help track the consumer intent and journey. And with some of those sources of data overlapping, it was also possible to verify the data veracity. Some of the data comes from panels, some from set top boxes, some from shopping and purchasing data, some from outside suppliers of data and some from Nielsen. “These layers give you the understanding of what the biases are and the things that you don’t do well,” she explained and added, “and that has all formed a canvas which gave us the ability to go out and create so much richer understanding into how advertising works.”

New Products and Services

A range of services were established around all of this research because, as Dupree explained, “the quality of the underlying data resulted in a richness of insights derived from the data.” Technology has also added new tools to examine the data in new ways. “Data guides everything we do,” explained Wood. 

 Some of the new tools released from NCS include Slm, the Sales Lift Metric, which is delivered weekly for a campaign, “so that changes can be made in-flight,” Wood noted. “It gives us the ability to go in and look at what is going on across different tactics all at the same time,” and compare tactics to see what is and what is not working and then re-allocate. The ability to examine campaign efficiency to potentially deploy dynamic ad insertion gives Slm added value to advertisers.

A Changing Marketplace

“The market is looking for faster and better,” Dupree explained. Her team is focusing on that mandate as well as “growth in CPG in a world where consumers have a choice. Twenty years ago in CPG, there used to be about 7,000 items in a grocery store and now, 20 years later, there are about 50,000. (This is because) the types of variety (of consumer products) have changed so much.” This has resulted in much more competition in the CPG space. Marketers need to be sure that their money is being spent wisely and efficiently and results in sales impact.

“There is also an abundance of channels in the media world,” Dupree continued, “the shift in OTT and Linear and Addressable and VOD as well as other traditional channels like magazines and radio, we are awash in choice and that has been important for us to understand and measure.”

What Resonates in CPG

There are some challenges for CPG marketers in this new media environment and some are more focused on price rather than efficiency. But to Wood, this is not a trend across the board. “A lot of the stories about spending less,” Wood began, “may not be from national advertisers. There is a lot of spending from tiny brands where the budgets are very low. When you look at budgets of over a million dollars, it is a different story.”

According to Wood, the creative matters a lot in a campaign. But, as she explained, “The creative is the starting point. We are also seeing that the importance of the media decisions has increased a lot over the last few years.”  And Dupree noted,” There are also so many more levers to pull.” Media has gained in importance especially in regard to targeting. An advertiser would want to target brand loyalists but should also consider targeting non-users of a certain brand as well as users of a competitive brand. This will not only expand the potential customer base, it will also help to build the brand over time. “When you talk about the brand promise,” Wood stated, “it speaks to the essence of the brand and what the brand stands for. The interplay of media with targeting creative and how those people come together has been some of the richest findings we have had.”

Personalization is another big consideration so that the brands can, “meet the consumer where they are,” concluded Dupree, “especially through ad versioning.” All in all, the confluence of data driven advertising within the CPG world is resulting in not only better targeting of consumers but also a greater understanding of their needs, wants and concerns.  For Dupree, “We feel that we are in more of a dialogue with consumers and it is a much more personalized experience,” and that should greatly improve efficiencies by reaching consumers at the right time, in the right place and with the right messaging.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com