News Corp Australia has announced a major data partnership with one of the nation’s leading customer loyalty programs at its inaugural virtual marketing event, Decoded, presented by News Connect. The event showcased how News Connect allows clients to plan, book and measure digital campaigns based on News Corp’s audience reach of 12 million Australians via 13 data partnerships, social display and advertising formats.
The agreement between News Corp Australia’s digital marketing platform News Connect and flybuys – a joint venture of Wesfarmers and Coles – will contribute transaction and behavioural demographic audience segments on a de-identified basis from flybuys’ 8.7 million active members.
The Decoded event was the publisher’s first test of a virtual sales event, something which will become the norm for all media businesses for at least the remainder of 2020. News Corp Australia’s managing director national sales Lou Barrett hosted the event with presentations from general manager of data and ad product solutions Suzie Cardwell and general manager, digital revenue & marketing services Paul Blackburn.
The Decoded event also revealed details of an additional 190 News Connect audience segments through a new data partnership with Red Planet.
Barrett told the online audience how the world had changed recently in a way no one had imagined. “Staying connected has never been more important than it is right now. We are seeing it at News Corp with huge increases in the number and people buying and reading our newspapers and visiting our websites for news and information, plus cooking tips and recipes, and how to entertain and educate our kids.”
Lou Barrett
With the amount of information on offer around the world, Barrett said people were being swamped and getting confused. “That’s why they are turning to trusted sources of information. People are reading the news more often and they are turning to trusted, established news brands, be they print or digital brands. People need and want to be connected, and marketers need to ensure they stay connected with their customers. That is where News Connect comes in.
“Over the past 18 months we have built News Connect into an end-to-end marketing platform that allows you to access the power of our audiences and premium environments to deliver your marketing outcome.”
The flybuys deal, the first with any publisher, creates an additional 360 audience segments within News Connect. This means News Connect will now offer more than 2,000 audience segments for brands and advertisers to create highly targeted, data-based consumer campaigns to target individual consumers.
Suzie Cardwell
Cardwell said: “The flybuys partnership represents a significant addition to the measurable and transparent data insights News Connect provides clients.
“Now, more than ever, News Connect dissects and analyses Australian shoppers’ behaviour through real-world consumer spending patterns, offering our clients the best way to find their customers on our network of trusted brands.”
During her presentation Cardwell reminded guests that when News Connect launched in 2015 it started with 40 audience segments, two data partnerships and an audience of 7m Australians a month. “The platform now offers over 2,000 audience segments and 12 premium data partnerships including sentiment based data from Unruly’s EQ, sports data from Kayo and Racenet, real estate data from REA.”
Cardwell warned against advertising on user generated content platforms which hold a risk for brands. “The risk that your ad could be served up alongside unsafe or untrue content. Why take that risk when you can advertise in a brand safe, professionally generated content environment.”
Paul Blackburn
Blackburn also tried to lure away advertisers from YouTube to News Corp by reminding them of the publisher’s offer – users watch complete 6 or 15 second video ads or they are free of charge. “Now you can make every second count programmatically by trading on a cost-per-completed view trading model in an Australia first partnership with Telaria. Our solution provides our advertising partners with something the walled gardens of the digital platforms cannot – an efficient trading solution with independently verifiable audience measurement.”
Blackburn also had news for FMCG clients. “We can show how many people purchased their product in Woolworths after seeing an ad on our network. To add further strength to this capability, based on our deal with fly buys, purchases made with Coles will also be added. That is 75% of all supermarket transactions.”
Barrett explains News Connect
• Digital network spans more than 20 brands including news.com.au, metro mastheads like The Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun, The Australian, Taste, delicious. and kidspot and also Vogue Australia
• Those brands reach 12m Australians
• Through News Connect and its data partnerships we collect over 2b data points every month
• News Connect gives us deep intelligence and insights into our audiences, helping you find the right consumers and helps you show them the right message at the right time to drive your business outcomes
• Know where your customers are, what they are doing, what they want and how and when to reach them