Audience Data Sessions: Q&A with UK IPSOS

Tell us about yourself and your company.

Hi, I’m James Torr and I oversee activation and partnerships at Ipsos in the UK. My role is about thinking where our data goes, what data we bring in and who we partner with to drive more value for our clients and the industry.

Ipsos is a global leader in full service market research, operating in 90 markets to deliver reliable information and a true understanding of society, markets and people - covering consumers, clients, employees and the general public. We work across multiple specialisms to help clients understand audiences, build strong brands, unlock growth and optimise experience.

Tell us about your audience solutions.

For us it’s about how we can help businesses reach the people who matter; those people who will help them achieve their marketing objectives – whether that’s driving sales, brand growth etc. To do this successfully, we believe that having high quality and fully transparent model inputs is key.

Our initial activation offering in the UK is based on these principles utilising our Ipsos iris (https://iris.ipsos.com) solution which provides a total understanding of what people do online (smartphones, tablets and PCs). It is data with integrity, at the heart of which is the UKOM (https://ukom.uk.net) endorsed, fully consented, passively metered panel. It’s high quality, nationally representative, with a fully transparent audience creation workflow that’s based on the actual behaviour of real people, not just devices.

Audience segments are created from demographic, geographic and psychographics. The wealth of behavioural data we passively collect allows us to find and build audience segments based on actions such as: topic and interest consumption, funnel based activity (e.g. awareness / consideration / purchase), search terms, products viewed, and apps / URLs visited.

Thinking about what comes next, we have other solutions such as Ipsos Global Influentials (https://www.ipsos.com/en/ipsos-global-influentials-survey) that reaches affluent and business audiences in 40+ markets, plus others that help us understand consumer motivations. We also work with thousands of companies collecting enormous amounts of data every year, so thinking about additional services we could offer in this space is certainly a consideration.

Why have you partnered with Eyeota?

What really stood out for us was Eyeota’s ability to onboard our audience data in a privacy-safe way into multiple platforms, allowing the industry to activate those audiences that matter to them. Moving forward, as we look to scale and onboard more audiences globally, Eyeota’s global scale really comes to the fore.

In what markets do you provide audience solutions?

We are initially launching in the UK, but with Ipsos present in 90 markets reaching general population, affluent and business audiences we are excited to scale quickly with Eyeota. Watch this space!

Why do you think audience data is important for today's marketers?

Ultimately, brands are selling to people, so the ability to find and build audience segments and uncover actionable insights into people’s behaviour, preferences, and needs allows marketers to create more effective and personalised campaigns.

Over time the quantity of information that brands have about consumers has grown exponentially, meaning they have more sophisticated ways to build out audience segments than ever before. With this comes the challenge to accurately replicate these segments for targeting.

Therefore, having high quality, accurate, and transparently sourced audience data is arguably more important than ever to be able to replicate segments. Knowing where audience data comes from, how it’s collected and how audiences are built should be increasingly top of mind for marketers if it’s not already.

The old adage ‘garbage in, garbage out’, is potentially more pertinent than ever.

What industry trends are top of mind for you?

If I think around what the future of cookies holds, conjecture around identity resolution services and different political frameworks – privacy and regulation around personal data has to be one of the things most top of mind.

Closely linked to data privacy is data quality. Knowing how data is sourced, how it’s created, ensuring it’s used appropriately and the parameters used to build audience segments is vital. It’s all about qualifying quality. Better inputs mean better outcomes.

Adding to this is an increasing focus on customisation from brands, who are more involved than ever in creating audience segments specific to them. We need to be able to go beyond “off the shelf”; we need the ability to recreate audience segments accurately with quality source data.

Reach out to our Audience Specialists at the Data Desk