nugg.ad, a leading European player in behavioural targetting, recently moved into the UK market. ExchangeWire spoke to Ajay Daved, nugg.ad UK & Ireland Sales Director, last week about the company's targetting technology, its committment to user privacy and the trends in the display marketplace.
Can you explain the nugg.ad offering in the UK market?
AD: nugg.ad is a Predictive Behavioural Targeting solutions provider firmly focused on behalf of publishers and ad-networks. Advertisers and agencies have challenges obtaining consumer insights on their target audiences. Combining onsite behavioural data with surveys providing sociodemographic and product interest data, predictive targeting goes one step further by identifying hard to reach audiences. This is particular of interest for publishers who are looking for winning budgets which traditionally go to television, such as high profile branding campaigns. Predictive Behavioural Targeting also successfully reaches other campaign objectives like clickrates and conversions even for brands and products for which usually there are no online channels available.
Can you provide an overview of how the nugg.ad targeting platform works?
AD: Firstly, with one tag implemented on our client’s site we collect click behaviour data which is stored in a cookie. Second, thru the ad-server a survey is set up on the same site. The survey data provides us with insights into sociodemographic data such as gender, age, and 48 individual product interests on a cross-section of users. The nugg.ad algorithm combines both data sets in real time to predict profiles on site and network users anonymously. Profiles are delivered to the publisher’s adserver to target display advertising, content, and product offerings relevant to the user. Based on this solution, nugg.ad clients can develop innovative targeting products to different campaign objectives from branding to performance.
Has it been successful in boosting performance - and are there any real-life examples you can provide?
AD: Yes, it has been very successful! For example, a recent branding campaign for L’Oreal which ran over multiple leading German premium publishers led to an increase in brand awareness by up to 50% and buying intention by up to 17.1%! Another recent example is a campaign with a leading German insurance company Hamburg Mannheimer. The campaign objective was an accurate targeting of the advertising creatives to audiences aged between 20-49 years, a household size of more than three people, and a high interest in financial products. Compared to a run of site campaign with identical conditions without targeting, nugg.ad increased target group reach by 47% and could also boost the click rate by 111% from 1.73% to 3.66%!
Do you work exclusively with advertisers – or can you work with publishers?
AD: We are publisher and adnetworks focused but yes, we have features and functions which advertisers and their agencies can utilize.
How does your service compare to other UK-based behavioural targeting companies? How does nugg.ad differentiate itself from other BT services?
AD: Compared to other UK targeting companies, our sociodemographic predictions are a unique solution only available at nugg.ad. Also, our business model is highly service orientated. Each client has direct access to an account manager and a consultant. This ensures that the clients are making the most of the tool, generates new models / ideas and formulates a very close working relationship. As a company we are constantly looking to develop and add new targeting features to our portfolio which will help our clients in their business and put the service that we provide to our clients at the forefront of what we do.
How are you addressing fears around user privacy? What do you think the industry must do to protect user privacy?
AD: Our CEO Stephan Noller is the chairman of the policy committee at IAB Europe in Brussels where he focuses primarily on data protection and privacy. Hence user privacy is something that we hold very close to our heart. We have been the first targeting company to have earned the ULD seal, the only official German privacy seal existing. In 2009, we also earned the European Privacy Seal (EuroPriSe) representing the most stringent level of data protection in Europe. In order to calm fears, nugg.ad also stands for a maximum level of transparency.
What kind of trends is nugg.ad seeing in the European display market at the minute?
AD: First of all, we are seeing a clear shift of advertisers and agencies buying audiences from our publishers to target campaigns. Advertisers and agencies are beginning to see the benefits of addressing their audiences and publishers are understanding the benefits profiling their data in order to win these campaigns. We also noticed, that many advertisers are starting to look beyond performance driven online marketing and now act towards premium segments such as measuring and influencing brand awareness and brand performance.