“Half the money spent on advertising is wasted — the question is, which half? That’s the age-old question in adland,” writes Peter Sayer in a commentary at Computer World. “Now Oracle is hoping to help its customers answer that question with the acquisition of Datalogix, which collects offline consumer spending data in a bid to help online advertisers pick the right targets.”
The problem — as ever — is proper tracking. Oracle research indicates that targeting systems trained on online shopping nabs just 7 percent of activity. The other 93 percent is spent offline where new tracking tech is sorely needed.
The Datalogix information could help.
“Datalogix aggregates data from 1,500 partners on the US$2 trillion spent each year by 110 million households, and uses it to help its customers target advertising based on other purchases to improve their sales,” explains Sayer. “Those partners provide it with information on 99 percent of U.S. automobile sales and a 20-year history of vehicle ownership, and it also tracks spending at 50 grocery chains and 1,400 other retailers.”
The Datalogix system is multi-facted; the company follows old line manufacturers like Ford, Unilever, and Kraft, as well as online services including Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and Google.
“Oracle plans to link the Datalogix service, which provides the spending data to customers through a cloud-based tool, to its other cloud-based services via Oracle Identity Graph,” says Sayer. “This, it said, will allow it to connect consumer identities to build better profiles that can be used to personalize online and mobile services — and even to target them offline and via the TV.”