Commentary

Gfk MRI Builds Political Ad Targeting Data Segments

GfK MRI has partnered with data management platforms (DMPs) to develop 23 online advertising targets that bring actionable insights to political ad campaigns.

The targets include "super" voters, those most likely to vote, as well as those moderately and slightly likely to vote, based on their voting records. Other targets include registered voters -- Democratic, Republican, Independent; swing voters by party, as well as undecideds; voters by ideologies -- five gradations, from very liberal to very conservative; and engaged voters -- active participants in the political process, as well as passive citizens.

The segments integrate voter registration records with data from GfK MRI's database on consumer attitudes and behaviors, gathered from its Survey of the American Consumer. The project aims to experiment with a variety of local, in addition to national data, along with attitudinal and psychographic data. .

Integrated through Oracle's Datalogix, the targets are accessed via BlueKai, with plans to add other DMPs in the near future. Datalogix takes the projectable data and renders it addressable.

Gfk MRI also continues to shift toward a programmatic targeting model. Andrew Arthur, SVP data partnerships and solutions at GfK Mediamark Research & Intelligence, sees the election as a way to fund some of the experiments it expects to apply to consumer targeting following the election.

"The evolution of addressable programmatic targeting has made it easier to bring our data to bear for local targeting," he said.

Political advertisers want to know voters who have not decided on a candidate or measure, rather than those who have decided and that's not something the data can address today. "They would need to get that data from a longitudinal or tracking study," he said, adding that it's beyond Gfk MRI's capacity during this election.

When asked if any brands have begun using the data, Arthur said he's waiting on "the edge of his seat to hear" from the DMPs. "It's almost like a retail model, where you put it on the shelf in hopes of someone buying it," he said. "If this effort bears fruit during the election, we'll be able to make a strong argument for our attitudinal data in digital targeting."

This post was previously published in an earlier edition of Data & Targeting Insider.

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