Archant, one of the UK’s largest publishers reaching 12 million digital readers every month, has reaped the benefits of tapping into unique customer intent data, after implementing a new, sophisticated online targeting platform called Carbon DMP.
The publisher was able to boost return on ad spend by a huge 300% for advertiser, Trade Direct Insurance (TDI) following a trial of ‘Audience Match’ – one of the platform’s latest innovations designed to find more programmatic direct deals.
TDI was looking to increase brand visibility beyond its usual reach for a three-week campaign as well as increasing sales – and Carbon DMP delivered unprecedented results.
Developed by global one-to-one marketing specialist Clicksco Group, Carbon DMP uses data science and machine learning (ML) to deliver intelligent insights into customer behaviour and intent to build and export better performing audiences that aim to reduce campaign costs, improve results and increase revenues.
It does this by analyzing its pool of over 1.2 billion rich consumer profiles and matching 3.5 billion ‘intent signals’ with first party data collected by Archant and TDI. Using its Audience Match tool, Carbon DMP identified the overlapping groups – plus lookalikes – for TDI’s target audience.
Alistair McLean, Chief Technology Officer at Clicksco, explains: “Carbon DMP enables one-to-one personalized online journeys, from acquisition, through to engagement and conversion, meaning our clients are never selling to a stranger – with the trial of Carbon DMP by Archant and TDI demonstrating the power of those insights.”
Crucially, Carbon DMP allowed Archant to track performance and optimise constantly over the course of the campaign – called ‘in-flight optimisation’ – to maximise return.
For TDI, this meant ads were placed in a highly targeted, brand safe environment, with more engaged audiences to increase revenue. Due to the regional nature of Archant’s digital properties, the campaign also achieved location-specific improvements. One geographical area boasted a significant 221% increase in sales revenue compared to the previous three months, while location traffic volume rankings climbed up to an impressive 14 from 57.
As a result of the Archant campaign, TDI improved brand PPC buying performance – seeing a 15% increase in adCTR and CPCs falling by 23%.
Sales and Development Director at TDI, Rob Rees commented: “These campaigns have shown the true potential of Carbon’s intent data and machine learning capabilities to find more highly engaged audiences that crossover between advertisers and publishers. We’re looking forward to leveraging these capabilities further as well as testing Carbon’s Facebook Sync product.”
Archant’s Product and Platform Director, Ryan Cousins added: “Since its launch we’ve been excited about the benefits that Carbon DMP could bring to us through relationships with current and new advertisers. Throughout the campaign, the Carbon team demonstrated commitment to their vision of driving improved yields by layering our audiences with their intent data.
“We’ve been really impressed with Carbon’s audience data capabilities and commitment to in-flight optimisation to get results.”
Since the platform was launched, Carbon DMP’s successes include:
- Award recognition: which includes finalist spaces in The AI & Machine Learning Awards 2019 for Best Emerging Technology and Most Innovative AI ML technology
- A plethora of industry firsts: such as the partnership between Carbon and media mogul David Montgomery’s National World to deliver value for customers, owners and investors by ensuring more transparency and better targeting of audiences
- Being a thought-leader on ethical and responsible data management: passionate about taking a proactive approach to data handling, GDPR-compliant Carbon DMP is a member of the IAB Transparency and Consent Framework and Network Advertising Initiative (NAI).
- Continual innovation: innovating is at the heart of everything Carbon does. It has joined forces with Durham University for a second Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) – after our award winning first KTP – which bridges the gap between industry and academia to bring in fresh talent and the latest technologies to develop cutting-edge product features.
