Tim Castree likes to think about audiences “as the nests that sit inside that larger purchase journey context to opportunity.” Until you can completely understand those consumers, you cannot target them to fulfill those opportunities.
Wavemaker uses a two-step process that begins with identifying “the gaps, barriers, challenges, opportunities” associated with the purchase journey, the agency’s Global CEO says in this interview with Beet.TV. “The second question within that is what are the audiences that we can most tap to unlock growth in the context of that purchase journey opportunity.”
“The connection between our macro purchase journey research and insight tools and our programmatic audience platforms is really how we connect the world of purchasing journey planning into the audience-driven activation models that exist for us today.”
The “connective tissue” is largely [m]Platform, Group M’s means of unifying WPP Group agencies’ access to data and technology. “We do all of our purchase journey research on top of mPlatform, connected through a Kantar product called LIVE Panel. That enables us to seamless connect what we see in the macro trends around purchase journeys to the audiences that we want to trade on programmatically once we understand them in that purchase journey context.”
When it was introduced two years ago, LIVE Panel provided access to a global panel of more than 5.5 million consumers in 30 markets. Components included such Kantar offerings as Lightspeed, Kantar Worldpanel, Kantar Shopcom, Millward Brown BrandZ, TGI and TNS Connected Life.
Even with the advances of programmatic technology, advertising media will continue to be a mixed trading model for a long time to come, according to Castree.
“There’s a lot of people in the industry who think that this whole thing is on an inexorable march to everything being bidded and I couldn’t disagree with that context more.”
Premium video, for example, will always represent “a relatively scarce environment. More places are going to want to continue to transact on an upfront basis and lock pricing in and manage that holistically,” Castree says.
“I think we’re going to be operating in a world of mixed trading types, upfront traded, futures traded and real-time trading well into the foreseeable future.”
This video is part of a leadership series presented by Wavemaker, the GroupM media agency formed by the merger of MEC and Maxus. Please find additional segments from the series here.
