Not content with inking deals with Acxiom, Data Republic and Red Planet, Nine has secured a data deal with finance and insurance powerhouse firm Equifax.
It means the network now has a bolstered set of specific data it can layer over its current assets and the move is set to appeal to marketers and agencies working in the finance and insurance space.
Considered one of the top three largest American credit agencies in the US, Equifax's Australian arm stems from its acquisition of credit information and analysis business in Australia and New Zealand, Veda, in 2016.
Veda, a then ASX-listed firm, which also held a controlling interest in data and analytics agency Datalicious, was renamed Equifax and this is who Nine is now working with.
Veda had been in the market providing data to the industry in various guises as far back as 1967.
Nine's chief digital and marketing officer, Alex Parsons, tells AdNews that the strong heritage of both Veda and Equifax put them in great stead to a partner of Nine and will enable players in that category better understand Nine's audience.
“This is just another arrow in the quiver, developing Australia’s richest dataset in Australian media,” Parsons says.
“A pretty strong sell”
Nine says the partnership with Equifax, which draws its data from a wide range of first party sources within finance, banking and insurance, zones in on certain consumer segments. Combined with Nine's own data, this makes for a “powerful combination for marketers”, Parsons adds.
As an example, while previously Nine may sell to a marketer its 'home loan or credit card intenders', it can continue to do that, but on top of that it can now apply segmentation based on the Equifax data giving it “a pretty strong sell”, Parsons says.
Most marketers have been working with Equifax already, but this move is deemed a further extension as it's targeting them across Nine's inventory.
Nine seems to be storming ahead with its data play, having secured deals with Data Republic and Red Planet, all aimed at ensuring it is “highly competitive in the data space” and able to offer marketers better segmentation and the ability to target the right consumers.
Parsons says the holy grail for Nine and longer-term strategic goal is about stitching in or syncing a client's database with its own database so it can not probabilistically, but deterministically, give them a result, to prove the purchase power of high quality anonymised segment targeting. This is where it is focusing efforts, not on rival networks.
“We're all highly competitive and I don’t want to speak ill of our competitors but when we look at ourselves and what we offer in this market and our ability, none of those competitors you mention [Seven and Ten] have first party data like we do; none of those competitors have a holistic, strategic approach to data on-boarding both second party data sources, and also offering the ability for customers to stitch in there own data. So when I think about data I think less about the companies and more about how we compete against that – that's where we have to go to and that's where we have to exceed,” he says.
Head of digital and partnerships at Equifax, Luis Fleita, says marketers are facing growing challenges regarding the speed and depth of relevant insights when trying to reach their target audience online.
"This partnership enables them to use relevant data and insights to create new customer segments," Fleita says.
“I want it and I want it now"
Parsons says he's confident of Nine's position on data and its strategic plan on how data will interact with clients, but on the other hand he always wants to move faster.
“I want it and I want it now is unrealistic in this industry”, Parsons says, adding that while Nine is moving faster than the competition, it's still not as fast as he would like.
Parsons was not able to say which clients had dabbled with the new dataset or who it was eyeing the offering. The deal is not exclusive to Nine only.
“When we think about the big ad categories we think travel, automotive, health and one of the big two are always finance and insurance,” Parson says.
“They're massive categories and one which Nine, across all our assets, performs well in - historically - and now into future it's set to be very important.”
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