• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, June 2, 2016

Search has always been an important feature for Edmunds.com. It provides the fodder to serve up lists of car recommendations. Now the company will take the search and shopper data to other platforms, allowing advertisers to reach a more targeted set of consumers.

On Thursday, Edmunds and Oracle entered into a multiyear agreement to assist marketers in connecting with car shoppers or those with similar preferences. The mounds of data collected from the car shoppers' marketplace supports the move.

Edmunds will use the data to create audience segments such as consumers shopping for a Honda Accord and put those in the Oracle data cloud, allowing advertisers to leverage the data in marketing campaigns. The site already offers advertising programs to carmakers and dealerships on the site. Now it will offer the same products and services on other Web sites through the Oracle Data Cloud through what Jennifer Dodez, director of programmatic solutions and audiences at Edmund, calls the "programmatic pipelines."

Dodez says visitors on the site are typically "very educated with a higher income, so visitors are a good audience for financial products and luxury goods." Others are environmentally savvy, so they're interested in electric or hybrid vehicles. Many are homeowners. Travel brands also make sense, especially for those who like to travel by car.

The Oracle Data Cloud supports more than 400 data integrations, allowing advertisers to use the data on just about any platform, including Rocket Fuel. More will be added in the coming weeks, Dodez says.

The data funnels through Oracle Data Cloud to automotive advertisers and affiliated companies -- include anonymized audience segments of individuals who have shopped, searched, researched, and priced specific makes, models, years, and types of vehicles. Through the Oracle Data Cloud partnership, marketers can combine this information with other data on past vehicle purchases, demographics, and other behavioral data to build custom target audiences.

BlueKai Marketplace also makes the data available and a range of connected data management platforms, trading desks, demand-side platforms, mobile platforms and other media companies, including Google, Verizon AOL, Twitter, and hundreds of others. By combining Edmunds’ data along with Oracle Data Cloud’s auto data assets, marketers can reach car shoppers and buyers at every stage of the purchase cycle through their media platform of choice.