• by Joe Mandese , August 1, 2007

New database integration techniques are yielding new insights and media planning tools that appear to be changing the way agencies buy media. Two unrelated examples - both involving Mediamark Research Inc.'s research on the media and lifestyle habits of American consumers - that were made public on Tuesday promise to change the way advertisers look at the usage of magazines and related Web sites, as well as how they target consumers via traditional media.

In one announcement, MRI unveiled a partnership with Nielsen//NetRatings analyzing the unduplicated reach of magazines and magazine-related Web sites to provide estimates for the "net" audience of each medium (see related story in today's edition). In another example, independent media shop KSL Media disclosed how a new application integrating MRI's data directly with a client's customer database helped it win a new piece of business by transforming a B-to-B marketer into a consumer advertising client.

KSL dubs the new approach "mediabase targeting," says Michael Oddi, executive vice president-direct response and media integration at KSL, who developed the technique for the agency by applying conventional direct marketing and database marketing techniques to media planning data.

"It's interesting that these tools have existed for a long time, but had not been used for planning with things like MRI," he explains. MRI data is integral to many media plans, and is the gospel for most magazine buys, but Oddi says the technique can be applied to virtually any media planning database. In fact, he says KSL already is looking at how to glean more local media market insights by applying the same technique to Scarborough Research data, which conducts market-specific research that is similar to MRI's research and is the gospel for local newspaper buys and many radio advertising campaigns.

The key to making the integration work, says Oddi, was to utilize a segmentation system developed that clusters 120 million U.S. households into 70 discrete geographic clusters based on a variety of lifestyle and economic criteria.

"It divides people not just on where they live, but based on their life stages: when they've graduated from school, when they get married, when they have children, when their children go away to college, etc.," Oddi explains, adding, "Life stages are the most telling thing, because it reveals when people have money to spend on certain things. And if you take that and you marry with something like MRI, you really get a sense of who your target is and where you can best reach them with media."

It is that kind of precision targeting that convinced James Hardie to become a consumer marketer, and to begin advertising directly to new home buyers or remodelers, says Oddi, because, "for a very small amount of money, we can target the most profitable clusters and go after them with the kind of media we know will reach them."