Why Use Interest-Based Targeting in 2017
In an age where social media applications provide an ideal platform for all demographics to share and discuss interests, and even shop their favourite products, why have marketers not been able to leverage this data for targeting purposes?
The truth of the matter is that all successful digital marketers in 2017 and beyond will exploit data from social platforms to more accurately identify and define interests among audiences. Only through properly identifying and accessing this interest-based data can marketers make accurate connections and deliver successfully targeted in-app campaigns. âThis seems like an obvious conclusionâ, you may be thinking, but the real challenge exists in ensuring you have accurate and reliable data compiled in a comprehensive and logical way so that you may access the true interests of the engaged consumer regardless of who your target audience is.
The Social Consumer
To ignore consumersâ expressed social interests when crafting the approach to campaign targeting is to be leaving marketing dollars on the table. eMarketer estimated that in 2015 more than half (55.6%) of individual Canadians and a larger majority (69%) of the countryâs internet users would engage in social media on a monthly basis. The number of consumers engaging with social media platforms and will only increase to do so as the younger, digitally raised generation matures. (4). This is where consumers go for every form of the old advertising concept of social proof today.
Further, while some marketers and platforms focus on UGC, technology should also consider what content users are consuming, not just what theyâre creating. This is because a consumer's social interests will give you visibility into the things they like, where they go, and what they like to do. Following these signals is allowing the consumer to take the lead and show the marketer what they are opting into, so the marketer can then in turn understand whether a product or service will be of any importance to them.
Canadians Love Mobile Applications
Whereas Canadian smartphone ownership sat at 55% in 2014, in just two years it increased to 76% in 2016, with 86% of mobile time being spent using apps, according to comScore. Some other relevant statistics regarding mobile application usage specifically include:
1 in 3 Canadians use mobile shopping apps (1)
3 in 5 Canadian Mobile App Users Have used mobile apps to access / manage their finances (2)
Top app adoption in Canada shows a healthy mixture of gaming applications, music listening, messaging, navigation, and social media (3)
While advertising in-app, the lack of cookies, tracking pixels, and limited capabilities of devices IDs can make targeting a unique challenge. So, given the usage of mobile devices and applications in Canada, marketers must work to actively collect data and use new technology to assist in creating relevant and meaningful connections.
New Times, New Tech, New Possibilities
Technological knowledge today is expanding at an unprecedented rate and the speed of discovery will only continue to increase. This includes the technology associated with collecting and actioning on data.
One of the newest technologies that is tackling data collection and usage differently is 140 Proof. The 140 Proof solution enables marketers to collect interest-based data collected from social sources and use this as part of targeting in mobile applications; they developed their Blended Interest Graph technology specifically for this purpose. Unprecedented in Canada, this technology interprets data from over 600 million public social accounts to create consumer profiles that segment audiences. In this way, we can connect with mobile application users on topics that are actually relevant to them.
The Blended Interest Graph technology takes billions of social cues, including what consumers share, where they check in, who they follow, and which keywords they use to determine their interests. With this information the Blended Interest Graph technology paints a more complete picture of the engaged consumer to build audiences that are nuanced, comprehensive and accurate.
With the ever expanding face of social media, 140 Proofâs Blended Interest Graph technology provides an unprecedented way to find the connections between consumers that humans cannot. With this crucial information we can now rank these interests against each other, and use them to better understand the consumer, which will lead to more accurate and productive marketing strategies for any application audience.












