• by Laurie Petersen , October 16, 2007

Database marketing giant Acxiom today officially launches its Relevance-X products designed to allow marketers to make online media buys using an ad network targeting specific customer segments based on their predictive lifestyle and purchase intent profiles.

"We're really excited about this," said Rich Howe, Acxiom's chief marketing and strategy officer. "We're bringing our knowledge and experience in direct marketing to the online channels to give clicks context--going far beyond basic information such as age, gender and household income to include the attitudes, beliefs and lifestyles of consumers that are much more predictive."

Some 80% of senior marketers responding to a recent Booz Allen Hamilton survey for the ANA said behavioral targeting is a critical competence for success as a marketer as the world becomes more digital. The attribute ranked higher than brand strategy.

The new Relevance-X suite combines Acxiom's recently acquired online advertising network, Echo Target, with its PersonicX household-level segmentation system to take the insight a step beyond other behavioral targeting now on the market.

Howe said the household-level cluster data attached to an individual's cookie is not personally identifiable information, and complies with industry best practices. In tests of the system this year with existing Acxiom database marketing clients, click-through rates increased by two to three times, he said.

Acxiom's initial push is for customers who use its modeling and database services in the direct mail world. The average CPM will be $5-$10 based on volume and targeting selected*, Howe said, and the network reaches 60% of the Internet population.

With the new system, marketers will be able to look at the characteristics of people in their existing customer databases and find more customers who match that profile through the ad network buy.

Acxiom's PersonicX places each U.S. household into one of 70 unique clusters and 21 different life stages, based on the household's specific consumer and demographic characteristics, including shopping, media, lifestyle and attitudinal information.

Also joining the Relevance-X family is Relevance-X Echo, a dynamic consumer retargeting solution that enables organizations to identify visitors performing specific behaviors and retargeting them with relevant messages across the Relevance-X ad network.

* This sentence was modified after the article's original posting.