Cardlytics' New Product Aims To Close The Offline/Online Loop

Cardlytics, an ad-tech company that uses purchase intelligence to inform clients' marketing, will launch its Platform Solutions on Thursday: a suite of products that aim to help marketers understand what's really driving revenue, according to company CMO Dani Cushion.

Cushion said there is a blind spot in measuring ROI, and Platform Solutions will help marketers ensure that the money they are spending and the audience they are reaching is not based just on probabilistic data.

For instance, Cushion said Cardlytics put together an audience to show an unnamed coffee brand that a consumer has been in one of the retailer's locations once in the last month. "It allows you to segment and spend on what you know they’ve been doing, not guess what they’ve been doing," Cushion said.

The new suite of products brings the company's purchasing intelligence beyond its native bank channel, Cushion said. (The company began by running online banking and mobile rewards programs with purchase-based targeting. More recently, its core product became Cardlytics Direct, which targets through the company's native bank channel. Partners include Bank of America and local credit unions.) Here are some highlights:

-- Cardlytics Audiences uses purchase data to create audiences to activate in campaigns across connected media, including display, mobile, video, social, email and TV. Cardlytics worked with Palisades Media Group (which represents The Weinstein Company) as it launched "SouthPaw."

-- Then there's Cardlytics Measurement, which helps marketers understand sales impact, both in-store and online, of campaigns.

"They want to be able to see what they’re really doing in sales," Cushion said. For a pet specialty retailer, Cardlytics identified which media campaigns and outlets drove the most incremental sales and were doing the best job of reaching the retailer's audience. The results: only 20% of impressions from the retailer’s campaigns (which weren't using Cardlytics Audiences) reached the intended audience.

-- Finally, there's Cardlytics Insights, which provides companies with a view of customers based on purchase behavior. For a big-box retailer, Cardlytics found some customers spent at craft stores, which was interesting because the retailer doesn't have a craft store or promote crafts.  

"A lot of people have been trying to figure out 'What is the impact of my campaign,' and 'How do I know the dollars I’m spending are really working for me?'" Cushion said. The data Cardlytics provides is complementary, Cushion said, and came about in response to clients saying they would love to be able to close the offline-to-online loop. 
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