By Andy Hunn, COO
When we began our journey building Resonate in 2008, we were trying to answer one simple question: how can you understand people online based on their values and beliefs rather than simple demographics? We knew from politics the power of this richer understanding of people that had been used to great success to power offline microtargeting of advertising. We were confident there must be a way to bring this richness of consumer understanding online.
This basic question, however, led us on a five-year adventure, combining the best of traditional research methodologies with the newest big data techniques to ultimately create motivational targeting.
Motivational targeting allows us to define and understand the online population in a completely new way. No longer are we married to just demographic data that describes ‘who’ people are or behavioral observations that describe ‘what’ people do. The rich attributes that describe who we all are as human beings at the core – values, beliefs, and attitudes that make us unique and that motivate us to take action – are actually tangible and observable.
Thus, we created the technology needed to target online audiences based on these new motivational characteristics to secure a more precise delivery of advertising to the right people. And while our business roots in politics and advocacy continued to expand, we were pulled head first into corporate advertising by brands searching for new and better methods. We quickly learned from our customers that, while targeting based on these characteristics was a critical new tool in their arsenal, they were equally interested in how we could use the richness of our research to further deepen their understanding of people.
The customers who truly grasped the power of what we were building were increasingly brand marketers. Traditional online advertising companies held brands back from reaching optimal success, with strategies that focused on the wrong measurements like price over audience reach. But Resonate understands the importance of knowing who your customer really is, the importance of deepening that understanding, and the importance of driving engagement with those consumers. We focus on measurements that make sense to brand advertisers – ad effectiveness, lift in awareness, and brand favorability.
About two years ago, our leading customers asked how we could use our data to help them learn even more about the customers who were responding to their ad campaigns and ‘why’ their messages were working. Furthermore, they wanted more clarity as to how our research and software could facilitate accurate and appropriate audience discovery and reach that would ultimately shape messaging and engagement strategies.
Today, we announce Resonate Analytics, a software platform that answers all of these questions. The platform enables our customers to engage deeply with our data to discern and understand more about their clientele – whether they want to learn about audiences they reach in current ad campaigns or about consumer insights that will drive future strategy. The pioneering work Resonate has done in unlocking the deeper understanding of consumer motivation is now in the hands of our customers.
Learn more about our product here.
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