WPP to Leverage Kantar Data for Media Planning

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Consumer panels with online and offline data continue to be all the rage among big agencies.

Yesterday, New York-based WPP Digital announced that it is taking the next step in leveraging the month-old data marriage from its Kantar properties, Compete and Cannondale Associates. That effort combined online/offline consumer behaviors with survey results and will now, in theory, help create better media planning for WPP's Media Innovation Group (MIG) division.

Stephen DiMarco, CMO for Boston-based Compete (pictured), explained, "Since we have 'matched' our panel with Cannondale, we can determine what [consumer packaged goods] products our panelists have purchased. This means we can use this information as the basis of our segmentation and then build media plans based on the recency and/or frequency of purchase in a product category like diapers. And in partnership with MIG, we can execute...the campaign."

According to DiMarco, MIG will be able to analyze the following types of consumer segments: "intent-based," such as online searchers for hybrid cars; lifestyle-based, such as luxury consumers; or content-based, like fantasy sports enthusiasts. "This is done by flagging consumers in our panel who meet certain segment criteria and then scoring all of the other Web sites that they go to," he said. "The result is an index for virtually every site on the Web based on its composition of all of the segments we track."

The development comes after a steady stream of announcements by agencies about their new consumer data/panel capabilities. For instance, last month Nielsen and DataLogix partnered to create household-level online ad targeting using the former's audience cluster PRIZM data.

And Omnicom Media Global recently announced that it had access to News Corp.'s huge Fox Audience Network consumer panel. OMG has integrated the data with its Living Segments audience segmentation system in order to target multichannel messaging based on consumer groups' shown interests.