Now Madison Avenue's Traders Can Trade Wall Street's, Data Makes Financial Pros A Biddable Commodity

In what may be the most ironic development since Madison Avenue began trading audiences the way Wall Street pros trade commodities and equities, agencies and their trading desks can now buy and sell Wall Street traders.

In a deal announced Tuesday, Targeted Victory, a data management platform (DMP) specializing in political media campaigns, said it is licensing data from Dean Media Group that will enable it to target online users who are financial professionals, including Wall Street traders.

Targeted Victory said the data, which is derived from financial website publishers, will enable it to target Wall Street pros based on what types of financial instruments they trade, including stocks, bonds, commodities, etc. (see table below).

“We are really excited about this and think that it is a data set that could have a direct application to politics,” explained Michael Beach, who co-founded Targeted Victory in 2009 to help Republican candidates leverage the kind of digital data that contributed to the success of the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns.

While Wall Street traders might seem like a niche for many broader reach campaigns, he said they could be an incredibly influential target for the right message or campaign strategy.

“For example, there could be some type of issue (capital gains taxes, etc) that is normally too niche for a broadcast message,” he explained, adding, “Now we can run an advertising program directly to voters that are interested in that issue.”

Beach said having the ability to identify, target and reach the Wall Street crowd is only half the battle. The other half, he said, is figuring out the right campaign to serve them.

“It is going to take a huge shift in creative thinking because we are so accustomed to the generic message that runs on broadcast television,” he explained, paraphrasing his partner Zac Moffatt to illustrate that point.

“Zac always says that we are data rich and content poor and this is a perfect example of that,” he said.

How the data could be applied for marketing other products and services isn’t clear, but the Dean database, dubbed FinancialAudiences, boasts 30 million unique profiles.

“We’re proud to partner with Targeted Victory to bring our FinancialAudiences industry-leading audience data to the audience exchange marketplace,” Dean Founder Jon Dean said in a statement announcing the deal. “This opportunity to make our data accessible to a substantially larger audience is a valuable one.”

Image provided courtesy of Shutterstock.
3 comments about "Now Madison Avenue's Traders Can Trade Wall Street's, Data Makes Financial Pros A Biddable Commodity".
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  1. Jim Pothier from Hero Digital Network, July 30, 2014 at 8:42 a.m.

    "The other half, he said, is figuring out the right campaign to serve them."

    Chico's Bail Bonds on line one...

  2. Rob Forgul from Shenigans, July 31, 2014 at 4:15 a.m.

    Sounds nice until you see how Dean Media Group sourced that data. I would argue there is a difference between for instance Bloomberg data (which they don't seem to have) and Forexlive and other low end retail sites (which they use). It would be good to see a full list of publishers they work with but I guess (wisely) they don't list that on their site.

  3. Joe Mandese from MediaPost Inc., July 31, 2014 at 7:59 a.m.

    @Rob: Excellent point, and a good reminder that when using audience data to target audiences, it's important to vet the quality of the data source. Thank you for drilling into it and sharing shortcomings. Main point of our coverage is that someone at least is trying to segment this audience via data targeting.

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