• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, July 25, 2013

Marketing technology company SteelHouse today announced that "look-alike targeting capabilities" have been added to their marketing platform through a partnership with Connexity, a digital advertising company. The below infographic describes look-alike targeting as finding consumers that have similar characteristics to an advertisers' current customers. It's essentially a way to discover new audiences, which is what Connexity is all about. 

SteelHouse gave RTM Daily the inside scoop on the partnership, and the first thing they highlighted was the results associated with companies that have used this type of technology. Speedo USA ran a look-alike retargeting campaign that resulted in a claimed 78% lift in overall campaign revenue. Merchant Tires ran a campaign using Connexity and SteelHouse's tech and saw a claimed 51.8% lift in conversion.

RTM Daily asked SteelHouse CEO Mark Douglas whether or not those figures were higher than expected. He said, "Using look-alike in conjunction with SteelHouse Slingshot - yes. Look-alike is proven to increase your audience reach, but conversion isn't always guaranteed."

SteelHouse is particularly excited about the partnership with Connexity because it integrates the look-alike targeting into their platform. "There are other vendors that offer look-alike, but not within their platforms," Douglas claimed. He added, "Typically, it's a stand-alone offering." He also said that look-alike targeting happens in real-time. "It's fueled by an audience graph that responds in real-time based on visitors to the site."

When it comes to matching the behavior of users, it's logical to wonder about privacy. But Douglas noted that the audience data pulled is anonymous and tracks devices rather than individuals. "Look-alike targeting collects anonymous session data such as approximate geographic location from an IP address, browser type, primary language, websites visited, ads clicked on and actions taken with any advertising partners, etc.  But it does not collect, buy, sell, share or use Personally Identifiable Information (PII) about consumers such as name, address, telephone number, email address, or any other data used to identify or contact a person."