It can be challenging to keep up to date with all of
the industry innovations today. Rentrak in particular has launched several new
initiatives that offer new ways to parse and append data.
I sat down with Rentrak CRO Bruce Gorelich and talked
to him about some of the new Rentrak initiatives including their purchase of
ITVX to measure in program product placement, international movie measurement
in China and, arguably the most interesting, the expansion of the use of their
data capabilities in the political realm by adding Republican campaigners in
addition to Democratic ones.
Here are the five videos on the subject.
Rentrak's purchase of ITVX to facilitate the measurement of in-program product placement:
Rentrak's use of Big Data in the voter targeting and election process:
Rentrak's initiatives at the local agency level:
Rentrak's work in the international and movie sectors:
Uses of other datasets like those from DirectTV:
The strategic use of data in the election process has
been around for years but now, with big data sets allowing for greater
granularity, companies like Rentrak provide insightful instruments for
political success.
It has
been reported that the strategic use
of Rentrak data matched to certain target voting groups helped get the
Democratic message across to voters and re-elect President Obama. Just
recently, the Republicans signed up with Rentrak as part of their campaign
strategy. Gorelich talks about what Rentrak did for Obama For America and what
the possibilities are going forward to this next election cycle with both
parties using the data.
How did it all begin? Gorelich assured me that Rentrak
approached both Republicans and Democrats prior to the election cycle in 2012
but it was only the Democrats that signed on for the data. The rest is history,
and a lesson to the losing side that granular big data, used strategically, can
make the difference between winning and losing.
I asked him to go through the process.
BG: “From August 2011 to October 2012, we provided (the
Democrats) with custom ratings based upon their voter profiles. They sent 25 million
voter names and addresses across 44 markets to a third party. We then sent our
operator name and addresses to that third party to match in a privacy protected
way. So we did not know who was who. We got back an anonymous ID with a tag
attached to it. The tag would say this is Obama Segment A, this is Obama
Segment B – there were about 8 to 10 segments depending upon the market and we
didn’t know what those segments meant. But what we were able to do was for that
year, produce for them on a quarter hour basis in each of the 44 markets, a
rating for all the stations and networks in those markets. They then used that
data to inform their buying process.”
He continues, “The results were two fold – first how
they bought. Typically they bought about 60 networks deep in a market. And when
they did buy a station they were much broader in how they bought a station in a
typical political buy. We looked at the Romney campaign. The Romney campaign
bought on average about 18 networks and was much more narrow in where they
bought during the day. So we were able to allow Obama to be much richer in
their selection of networks and time periods also, because we were measuring
230 odd networks compared to the other guys who are much smaller. So the
network buy was much richer and broader for Obama. And, what they have said in
public is buying this way allowed them to deliver 20% more of their target. So
if they had spent the same amount of money but had bought on women 18-49 for
example. They would have gotten 20% less on those segments. So it was a better
way to buy, a richer way to buy, a more efficient way to buy and, of course,
because they won, a more effective way to buy.”
I look forward to see how each side uses Rentrak for
this next election cycle. Stay tuned, and don’t forget to vote!
