Decoded, News Corp Australia’s virtual marketing event for advertising, marketing and media executives, held its third presentation today. Hosting Decoded 3 was News Corp’s managing director of national sales Lou Barrett (pictured above).
One of the buzzwords of the event was “attention”. But Barrett stressed advertisers needed “quality attention”.
Decoded highlights included the announcement of new data capabilities and digital advertising solutions to enhance the digital offering for clients.
“With clients increasingly moving to targeted marketing, quality attention and how you earn it is critical,” said Barrett. “It is one thing to reach an audience, but holding their attention and then providing verified measurement is what marketers want today.”
Barrett also introduced a short welcome from News Corp Australasia executive chairman Michael Miller who reminded the 2,000+ people watching online about recent record high audiences for many of the News Corp brands. Miller also talked about the transition at the publisher that had seen it re-positioned as a digital first publishing business.
Barrett then welcomed ThinkPremiumDigital general manager Venessa Hunt who had a fireside chat with general manager of data and ad product Suzie Cardwell and general manager, digital revenue & marketing services Paul Blackburn.
News Corp’s Paul Blackburn and Suzie Cardwell
Hunt got details about the new data that will be available through News Corp Australia’s digital marketing platform, News Connect:
Automotive data – Marketers will be able to understand and target Australian households intending to purchase new and used vehicles through a new partnership with smrtr. Built using genuine transaction data, the predictive models cover over 270 unique makes, models and car segments and achieve, on average, 12 times improved targeting effectiveness.
Supermarket data – Marketers will be able to understand, target and measure the supermarket buying habits of more than 75% of Australians through News Connect and a new data partner, allowing them to connect with new and existing customers.
Transaction data – Marketers will have access to data from the largest payment provider in Australia. With 160 million transactions every hour, covering 40% of Australian credit card holders, it will provide substantial new data sets, resulting in more than 100 new segments targeting both Top Spenders and Frequent Spenders across a range of product categories.
Cardwell explained: “News Connect is one of the strongest and richest commercial datasets in the market. We’re excited to secure these new data and insights partnerships that will significantly enhance the quality of News Connect’s targeting throughout the entire customer decision making process, from initial awareness to consideration and purchase.
News Connect collects two billion data points from News Corp Australia websites and apps, as well as from partnerships. With 15 key partners – including Near, flybuys, Qantas Red Planet, realestate.com.au, Fox Sports, productreview.com.au, smrtr, TEG and more – News Connect offers more than 2,700 segments where marketing partners are able to find any audience, particularly intenders.”
Blackburn noted that News Corp online visitors spend 53% more time than its nearest commercial competitor according to Nielsen data. The combined digital assets attract 14m+ uniques a month and the average visitor returns 11 times across the month. Those 14m+ visits deliver over 300m page views.
Additional digital solutions announced include:
Enhancements to News Connect including new Premium Insights Dashboards. Offering clients access to advanced audience consumption data and insights, marketers can build a clearer picture of Australian consumer behaviour and their target audiences.
A Digital Catalogue Suite was announced, highlighting News Corp Australia’s suite of digital catalogue advertising options including the new Catalogue Connect ad format.
Following the launch of Targeted Time in View in September 2020, which allows advertisers to buy blocks of time with their target consumer, the company announced further improvements to attention trading with new audiences for the product – including state-based targeting, metro or regional Australia and credit/finance, business decision-makers and more.
Barrett ended the 45 minutes session with the offer of a 25% discount for advertisers who book a campaign using News Connect before June 30. A minimum spend of $10,000 is necessary and there are a couple of other small print qualifications too.
See also: Decoded 2020 – News Corp reveals new data partnership at its first virtual presentation