BtoB Media Business - May 2012 - (Page 17)

SPECIAL REPORT Future of lists is in audience data List rental will benefit as media companies build more comprehensive databases BY MARIE GRIFFIN B A doing? Ted Stazak:As a percentage of our total revenue, it represents about 3%, but it is growing. In the first three months of this year, we’ve actually had record months. Why? We did a quick analysis and found that some clients went to other list sources, which may have been less expensive, and then they came back to us because of the quality of our lists. The majority of our list rental is handled internally by the account executives working with our commercial clients. Statlistics does some sales for us, but it is a small percentage of the revenue generated by our lists. MB: Are you doing anything different in how you organize, select or append audience data? Stazak:We are going to do some different things, such as adding behavioral data on the audience in addition to the BIO TED STAZAK Directoraudience development, Meister Media Worldwide usiness media companies are increasingly consolidating their audience databases and gathering information on individuals’ activities across every platform—print, email, Web, subscriptions, events. In the not-too-distant future, b-to-b marketers who rent lists will reap benefits from these audience development projects, such as more up-to-date contact information and list selections based on behavior. Instead of a list of people with buying authority in a given market, for example, marketers would be able to choose lists of people who have consumed content on a topic or product category relevant to their campaign. Northstar Travel Media has a centralized audience database, but it wasn’t built for the data mining the company currently wants to perform, said Tom Cintorino, exec VP-digital media. “We’re now in the middle of phase two, where we will be able to bring together the audience data we have across all our brands and platforms.” Cintorino said he expects it to be completed by midyear. Not only will the database provide more targeted, segmented lists but it will also let Northstar charge higher rates for renting its lists. “This will allow us to have a tiered pricing model based on the value of the customer record,” Cintorino said. For example, the upgraded system will identify travel agents or businesspeople with an interest in a particular destination based on their onand offline activities. People who sought information on a specific geographic area s director of audience development, Ted Stazak oversees Meister Direct, the department that handles Meister Media’s list rental activities. In his current position for nine months, Stazak is involved in projects that would add online behavioral data to the audience records. MediaBusiness: How is your list rental business would likely be strong prospects for a marketer interested in that area and, therefore, be worth more to a list renter, he said. George Fox, president of Advantage Business Media, said the systems that enable the company to analyze the data it has been collecting on audience behavior are just coming online. “We will be able to see what people do across all the platforms we have—email blasts, newsletters, websites, anything they download, any commenting they do,” he said. “We’ll be able to track all of that back to the individual profile.” “Our plan is to put together buckets of people who have very unique needs around content,” Fox said. One way to monetize that would be through list or database rental, but there are multiple possible options. “We can create special content pieces, such as research or microsites, that we could sell to groups of advertisers at premium rates or we could charge the users directly,” he added. John Rockwell, who joined Sandow Media as VP-digital audience marketing in October, said of the company: “We have great magazines and websites, and we’re adding tablet apps and other new distribution channels. We’re currently setting up foundational systems to tie all the data together. That will help us to better understand our customers and to monetize them in new ways.” As Sandow collects, aggregates and analyzes more audience data, though, Rockwell is not sure list rental will be the most Meister Direct adds behavioral data to enhance lists , holistic view demographics. I’m vetting a system that will gate our websites and start tracking behavioral data on Web visitors. This will allow us to build a 360 -degree of our audience members. We’re also looking to add functionality that will let users log in with their LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter user names and passwords. When they do that, they are giving us permission to grab the public data from their profiles and append it to our master database. We’re also moving to (a different email vendor) so that we can get the behavioral data from emails. MB: How will this impact the lists you rent? Stazak: When we can append the behavioral data to what we have, it will enhance the value of our lists. We will probably develop new lists based on topics and behavioral patterns. MB: Do you think this will have an impact on your list pricing? Stazak:We have standard rates that are the same across all lists; but, in the future, we will be looking at varying the price according to the value of individual lists in the marketplace. For example, an opt-in address for a cotton grower is very hard to get, so we might be able to charge a premium. —M.G. mediabusinessonline.com | May 2012 | Media Business | 17 http://www.mediabusinessonline.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of BtoB Media Business - May 2012

BtoB Media Business - May 2012
Contents
Peter Goldstone returns to Hanley Wood
Our ninth annual selection of cutting-edge leaders
Building databases grows list rentals
Sales & Marketing
M&A
Audience Development
Events
Production
People
Benchmarks
Incoming ABM chair takes stock of industry

BtoB Media Business - May 2012