Earlier this week, Amy Sullivan, our Vice President, Customer Insights, and Andrew N. Assad, Content and Propositions Marketing Manager with Microsoft Advertising Canada, spoke to attendees at Environics Analytics’ 5th Annual User Conference about how to integrate data for better digital insights.

During their session, “Understanding the People Behind the Clicks,” Amy and Andrew shared the story of how Microsoft Advertising used a unique combination of custom research with data from Delvinia’s AskingCanadians™ online community and Environics Analytics PRIZMC2 segmentation system to develop key target segments and deepen insights into their own brand.

 

With products like Bing, Xbox, MSN and Windows Live, Microsoft Advertising had access to a range of metrics and visitor imagery. But the company wanted a deeper understanding of the human behind the machine.

“We share Andrew’s goal of really understanding the person behind the click,” Amy said. “We want to know not only what make makes them click, but what makes them tick. We want to really hear their story, so we can tell ours – or so Microsoft can tell its story – more effectively, in a way that ensures more people listen.”

The solution they came up with is one that worked by leveraging the strengths of all three collaborators together: Delvinia, Environics Analytics and Microsoft, Amy explained.

Microsoft contributed its own data to the mix and Delvinia crafted a custom survey about Microsoft and its suite of products, digging into the attitudes and behaviours of Microsoft consumers. The next step involved leveraging Environics’ strengths to marry the brand insights with the vast data about media and product usage that EA is able to knit together through the PRIZMC2 segmentation system, which brings the added layer of social values, attitudes and lifestyle data.

“By following this process of layering existing Microsoft data with Delvinia’s custom brand research and Environics’ rich profiling of the Canadian population, we were able to enjoy a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts,” said Amy, who described PRIZM as the glue that enables all of the pieces to fit together to really understand the people behind the clicks.

Amy said that in the most immediate, practical sense the team can now:

“These are outcomes that any brand that follows this process can enjoy. Anyone here can adopt this template to deepen insights into their own brand,” Amy told the audience. “If you are already a PRIZM subscriber, you’re halfway there.”