How The Daily Beast uses data to inform native ad strategy
For the former, it has licensed a predictive tool that suggests topics that would work for clients’ campaigns based on social data. Once a campaign is running, there’s a homegrown dashboard that analyses its performance in real time. This allows advertisers to take some of the guesswork out of topics they should address and to see how they performed.
Mike Dyer, co-managing director, chief product and strategy officer of the IAC-owned Beast, came from Hill Holliday, where he launched its content marketing practice. As a former agency executive, he found that the consumer data agencies use to inform their campaigns to be rudimentary.
“There’s still a tendency in publishers who do native advertising to rely on their creative gut,” Dyer said. “So we do a lot of work around, how do you ensure market fit before you shoot a frame?”
The predictive tool, called Cassandra, was first road-tested by the editorial side. It analyses the social media activities of a brand’s social followers to see what other topics they’re interested in and which social platform they’re talking about those topics on. With it, the Beast can guide the brand in choosing topics to write about that wouldn’t necessarily be obvious. The tool, which is from a vendor the Beast wouldn’t name for competitive reasons, can also tell the client how to promote the resulting content where it will resonate the best.
More like this
The future of native advertising
Agencies see creativity, programmatic and mobile as the big opportunities for native advertising
Sharethrough’s CEO on the future of native advertising and the battle for attention
