• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 16, 2011

Many marketers don't understand how to plan and optimize integrated campaigns across multichannels, although they want to run cross-platform efforts. To enhance that goal, Compete teamed with parent company Kantar Media -- specializing in TV audience segments -- to build out audience segments combining Web site and television panelists, Stephen DiMarco, Compete CMO, told Online Media Daily.  

The tool, built on the recently released Compete Media Planner, will allow brands to map out thousands of sites where audience segments spend the majority of their time.

Today, advertisers and agencies can use this tool to identify and reach more than 4,000 audience segments online. Publishers and ad networks can use the information to attract potential advertisers by demonstrating how effective they are at reaching those segments.

Media buyers don't want to spend less money on campaigns, but rather demonstrate the money they do spend is a smart investment, generating returns to gain bigger budgets to grow sales. The next phase of the audience-buying platform expected later this year will analyze TV viewers and online behavior, applying the same audience-buying segments to each in an effort to help media buyers plan campaigns across multiple media.

In fact, Compete will also build out the tool to support mobile, and deliver it sometime early next year to help media buyers plan where to place ads. "We will take the lead in building out a mobile panel this year," DiMarco says. "Our goal is to have a large panel with a common set of panelists where we can see their online, TV and mobile behavior to help media planners, advertisers and publishers understand how to target the correct audience with the correct ads."

Better planning on the front end makes it easier to attribute media on the back-end, although advertisers are not yet asking for an attribution-focused media planning tool. DiMarco says the Compete Media Planner tool could improve targeting and attribution management -- but this is typically done during or at the end of a campaign, respectively, whereas media planning occurs prior.

Marketers that do a better job of planning across media and understand how search, social, online display, mobile and television work together up front can do a better job of measuring attribution.

The audience segment might drill down to focus on "people who have shopped for BMW, Audi or Lexus within the most recent month." or focus on "consumers with Verizon accounts looking for an Apple iPhone 4."

Media buyers looking for Verizon customers interested in smartphones will want to build a segment around people who have logged into the Verizon Web site and browsed for iPhone information on any Web site selling the iPhone 4, such as Best Buy.

Generating a report to determine how big that segment is online becomes the next step, followed by a list of sites supporting the highest amount of that targeted audience on the company's Web properties.

"The segments are aligned perfectly in the way media planners manage their business," DiMarco says. "The breadth of the segmentation makes it a much richer media planning tool than what has existed before."