35.5 Frontier Papers

35.5.1 (Neumann, Tucker, and Whitfield 2019)

  • 19 data brokers , 6 buying platforms, 90 third-party segments

  • Descriptive Analysis

  • Study 1:

    • Examine performance of an ad campaign with the support of data (to target customers)

    • Automated system can only delivery 59% to the target market.

    • Audience accuracy varies between platforms.

  • Study 2:

    • Examine the optimization of DSPs (Demand-side platforms) for selecting data sources and ad placements.

    • Delivering performance = f(audience selection, quality of the profiles by data brokers, and other factors).

    • This study only focuses on the quality of profiles by data brokers.

    • Optimization is worse than random selection (because average accuracy of identifying the true subject is 24.4% which is less than 26.5% according to the natural distribution of the two attributes - age and gender).

    • Households with children significantly reduce the performance accuracy (due to potential usage by multiple members)

  • Study 3:

    • Audience interest-based data are the new type of target (besides age and gender)

      • Sports interested

      • fitness interested

      • travel interested

    • High accuracy for this interest-based (but still variation by data brokers)

  • Cost-benefit analysis

    • Cost = fixed (third-party audience info) + variable costs (cost-per-mille of online ads)

    • Ad optimization is more costly than banner (about 151% more), but compared to the gain, third party solution is still economical.

References

Neumann, Nico, Catherine E Tucker, and Timothy Whitfield. 2019. “Frontiers: How Effective Is Third-Party Consumer Profiling? Evidence from Field Studies.” Marketing Science 38 (6): 918–26.