Giving advertisers a better connection

The mysterious art of advertising is no longer that mysterious.

Traditional media companies are bringing new functionality to advertisers.

The mysterious art of advertising is no longer that mysterious.

Attracting eyeballs to a screen or a page is, of course, still the first critical step. But the information that can be gleaned from the viewing or reading ­habits of the public is now so detailed that media companies like News Corp are able to offer their advertising clients a level of insight into customer behaviour that was unthinkable just five years ago.

While the big tech platforms were able to get a jump on traditional media companies with regards to targeted advertising, organisations such as News Corp (publisher of The Australian) are fast catching up.

“We recognised about five years ago that almost all marketing was moving to being data driven,” said Suzie Cardwell, News Corp’s general manager of data and ad products.

“And advertisers and marketers are always looking for sources of information about their audiences that give them a deeper understanding of who those audiences are and how to talk to them.”

According to Ms Cardwell, the company’s News Connect platform, which was launched in late 2015 to give advertisers greater access and insight to audiences, has “evolved” significantly in the past couple of years — not just because of improving technology but also due to the growing number of News Corp sites across its network.

With about 14 million unique visitors to its many digital sites each month, News Corp has developed more than 2700 so-called “audience segments”, allowing them to categorise readers who have similar interests — thus giving advertisers highly specific details about the kinds of consumers who are engaging with their brand.

“We’re trying to move from the traditional position of effectively selling eyeballs and ad impressions to our marketers, to building models and formats to move beyond that old model and to help them deliver on their outcomes,” Ms Cardwell said.

“News Connect brings together all the audience data and information that we have across our network.”

Crucially, the data that is obtained is “de-identified” — that is, all visitors to the company’s websites remain anonymous, and their personal information is also protected.

“When we are gathering information about what our consumers are doing across the network, we do it in a de-identified way. Even if a certain person is logged on to The Australian, and looks at a politics story before going on to read the newspaper’s magazine, an ID number is assigned to that reader — never a name,” Ms Cardwell said.

“In that way we ensure that people will never be identified.

“Ultimately, it’s about making sure we’re targeting the right people.”