One of our primary objectives at DigitalReef is to help brands and people create new connections in a thoughtful way. A critical part of this is behavior-based audience profiling, which identifies the most engaged users. This is a method that allows advertisers and publishers to display relevant content to users based on their mobile behavior.
The best way to build these audiences is not relying on high-level demographics. You need to build behavior-based audience profiles in a natural and unobtrusive way.
Peeling Back the Data Layers
Behavior-based audiences are built from signals such as mobile applications used, geo-location data, notification engagement and content consumption.
Behavior-based profiling is more effective for advertisers than interest-based or search queries because it enables them to build an audience based on known data points rather than sets of assumptions. For example, location-based data may show you that the average person only goes to a certain number of places. But by layering on top of location data with other data sets, you can develop robust information profiles using publicly available data sources.
It’s no longer good enough to say that your audience is “C-level executives” or “Females 18-34.” Developing purchasing personas for your brand that outlines interests, affinity groups and more nuanced demographic data will help ensure that you are able to identify a narrow audience that will actually help your brand achieve its conversion goals.
Many companies can benefit from developing behavior-based audiences. For example, financial services companies can develop a deep understanding of their members and identify moments when they might be seeking a loan instead of a new credit card. Consumers respond more to precise, targeted and desired offers that are based on the data points collected and analyzed.
How To Build Your Audiences
Building your company’s audiences generally relies on the collection, aggregation and analysis of data. Responsible data collection is done anonymously. There is no need to collect personally identifiable information along with behavior-based data. Generally speaking, your company can utilize four different types of data:
- Application interactions: Publishers and app developers can have visibility into the pages a user visits, buttons they click and what they do in an app and turn those into valuable insights. By collecting app interactions at the app level, you can create a robust first-party data source.
- Opt-in geolocation data: Utilizing data of places visited or routes traveled can identify patterns. This can also be overlaid with other data to give insight into interests such as vacation destinations or sports teams.
- Notification interaction: Seeing what types of alerts or notifications a user interacts with can give insight into effective times of the day or types of alerts that are effective. It can also give visibility into purchasing patterns through last-click attribution. Notifications can also collect users’ feedback and preferences, which creates a two-way communication channel.
- High-level demographic data: When an application developer or carrier network shares age, gender or other demographic data, we can utilize that to create powerful buyer personae.
Anything that gives insight into a user’s behavior can be a powerful context clue to effectively engage with them in the right moment with the right offer. If you can see that they are in a shopping journey, for example, knowing when to offer a coupon or other incentive can push them to a conversion.
Having dynamic and effective behavior-based audiences gives brands the ability to engage with users during their mobile journeys and utilize information to form a powerful connection. By segmenting your users by their behavioral data, you gain a more comprehensive look at how you can adjust your messaging and ultimately products or services in order to stay ahead of the competition.