Consumer Cost Insights From 2014 Guide Digital Advertisers in 2015
BOSTON, MA – ChoiceStream, a leader in programmatic advertising, released its Audience Cost Calendar Year In Review, a graphical summary detailing the price trends of consumer data segments throughout 2014. These trends include a total increase in cost index that began two years ago and has continued through December 2014, with an average price increase of 4.2 percent per month. This is consistent with the industry increase in ad spend that brands are allocating toward programmatic campaigns.
Some key trends noted throughout 2014 include a peak of the World Soccer segment ranking in July, corresponding with the FIFA World Cup, which took place from June 12 to July 13.
Similarly, eight sports-related segments all ended the year with a significantly higher cost index than they saw in November, which is fitting with national sports; the NBA is mid-season, and NFL Super Bowl XLIX is fast approaching.
ChoiceStream notes that there seems to be a direct correlation between fluctuations in brands’ sales trends and advertising efforts in relation to consumer segment costs.
“Brands, on average, are targeting segments with labels that match the intuitive audience definition,” says Bill Guild, VP of Marketing at ChoiceStream. “This indicates that the prevalent mode of digital ad targeting is still manual. As more brands adopt automated optimization, we expect targeting to shift toward the non-obvious correlations discovered by machine learning, and we expect the linkage between predefined segments and markets to blur.”
Additional trends from 2014 include the South Pacific travel segment dropping off of the top-ten highest ranked segments in April, after Malaysian flight 370 went missing in March. Also, when the Ice Bucket Challenge raised awareness for ALS in August, and the Ebola virus raised national health concerns in October, the General Health segment rose in cost during each month respectively in comparison to others.
ChoiceStream’s year-in-review infographic
About the Audience Cost Calendar
ChoiceStream monitors the change in cost index for consumer segments. In 2014, the company published its findings monthly to illustrate to advertisers how seasons, holidays and industry trends affected the prices that they paid, on average, for digital advertising. The Year in Review serves as a recap of the twelve infographics that the company published from January to December of 2014.
About ChoiceStream
ChoiceStream is a full-service Programmatic Marketing Platform that delivers top results in both direct response and branding campaigns. Concierge-level services include creative development, poll-based audience discovery, campaign optimization, and complete transparency. With an extensive first and third party data network, enhanced by proprietary data, ChoiceStream can target and convert the most valuable consumers in real-time. For more information on ChoiceStream, please visit www.ChoiceStream.com.
