• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, March 4, 2019

Voice and facial recognition and thumbprints -- similar to the way an iPhone user might gain access to their mobile phone -- are being considered as ways to collect opt-in information to build out audience segments for ad targeting.

“It’s something we are keeping an eye on,” said Dave Dague, CMO at Infutor, an identity management company supporting the ad space and the use of new “identity markers.”

While it may sound like a page out of a futuristic novel, Dague described a theoretical example.

If someone wanted to get a quote for solar panels for their home, they might use their thumbprint on a touchscreen rather than type everything in. That would populate a form. The information then feeds into platforms like Infutor.

“It’s just a concept,” he said.

It remains one of many concepts the company is exploring following the acquisition of Ruf Strategic Solutions in December 2018, where Infutor integrated the company’s Connex Audience Clusters into the Infutor ID Suite.

The goal aims to enable what Dague believes created the first real-time inbound identity resolution and analytics-driven segmentation platform in market segments such as automotive, housing and tourism.

The completed ID Suite now creates segments in real-time for brands like Home Professionals from a variety of data sources such as searches, purchases or forms that feed back into the platform to serve up the ads. It turns an anonymous inquiry into a real person, all within privacy guidelines, Dague said.

The combination increases the number of attribute fields, and much deeper insights about the specific households and businesses. Each cluster, for example, has hundreds and hundreds of data points. If someone is an avid user of a travel website, it may also identify that the person watches CNN on their laptop rather than television.

The data in the audience clusters will integrate into other platforms across Infutor. It will offer look-alike audiences specific geographic locations. The company also will release propensity models -- for example, those in a position to refinance their home.  

Most of Infutor’s work supports desktops, including analytics, but later this spring the company will release services for mobile.

Connex Audience Clusters enable marketers to identify groups of a brand’s most profitable customers based on unique key performance indicators across seven cluster types such as household, family, neighborhood, digital, generations, life stage and messaging.