Alex Kuhnel, Product & Delivery Director, Experian Digital Advertising Services
1 - What is your involvement in mobile?
My role in Experian is to inject our industry-leading data and analytical capabilities into the digital environment. We have successfully launched an exciting online targeting solution in the US and Europe that leverages our offline data and segmentation in the digital environment.
Leading media owners can now offer improved segmentation, increasing advertiser’s spend by improving results through the targeting of their ideal audiences, and ensuring their approach is consistent offline and online.
We purposely built our solution in a media agnostic way, which means it not only works across DM and online, but also easily integrates into the mobile environment for push and pull media. For each of these media, I have to make sure that we adhere to and better on existing privacy rules.
I see mobile as an essential part of a multi-channel marketing approach, where advertisers can use a consistent data set to target the best prospects and existing customers.
2 - What excites you most about mobile at the moment?
Having worked in mobile myself for 8 years before joining Experian, mobile has been transformed from a phone into a true multi-media and multi-utility device. The possibility to access the Internet opens up astonishing opportunities. The aggregation of multiple data sources for one user via apps opens up almost countless ways to bring value to consumers. Current apps across the mobile operating systems probably don’t really leverage this opportunity to the fullest yet.
3 - Does mobile bring greater potential for targeting?
Of course it does, due to it being a truly individual device. The amount of data that you have access to from a targeting point of view is staggering. Consumers now use their devices for a wide number of things - email, internet, navigation and shopping. Each of these activities adds to the richness of the data pool, allowing for both pull and push targeted marketing. Due to this amalgamation of data the complexity means that privacy rules need to be at the heart of mobile marketing.
The issue I see is that mobile targeting to an extent follows the online model, as it is already a very fragmented market place. This makes it very difficult for advertisers to consistently target or measure across significant audiences.
In order to fulfill its potential, we need to ensure that not only are there consistent targeting technologies and data segmentations available, but also that advertisers can communicate using existing classifications, from offline Direct Marketing to Online segmentations.
4 - What's the best thing you've seen in mobile?
I am a bit of a music buff. I am using my Iphone as remote control for my Sonos S5 wireless music system, to manage music from my Time Capsule, listen to 10,000 or so digital radio stations and also to access Napster. And I can then of course listen to the music offline while away.
5 - What one piece of advice would you offer mobile marketers?
Try and build consistent multi-channel advertising campaigns by leveraging segmentations that go across multiple advertising distribution channels. This allows you to test mobile performance by segment to truly understand impact of your campaigns.
