GroupM has further bolstered its data capabilities with the launch of a new global consumer and media insight tool called Live Panel, which is designed to enable clients to reach audiences and measure outcomes more effectively.
The product has been in development for about 12 months, said Harvey Goldhersz, GroupM’s chief data officer and CEO of analytics, with much of the pre-launch work focused on recruiting panelists, obtaining relevant information such as demographics, media habits, purchase behaviours and attitudes, and ensuring the data is accessible to planners and buyers through query tools.
Live Panel is comprised of 5.5 million consumers in 30 markets (including 187,000 people in Canada) and will connect with the planning tools of GroupM media agencies (MediaCom, Mindshare, MEC and Maxus) to accelerate the time from insight to planning and implementation.
“We’ve historically been geared towards driving brand metrics like awareness, attitude, purchase intent, but now a media agency can also drive other types of engagements with consumers, such as direct sales and lead generation,” said Goldhersz.
“As much as we’re getting better and better at driving behavioural outcomes, we now also want to be able to connect an understanding of why consumers behave that way and replicate those successes over and over,” he said. “What this will allow us to do is connect the why with the what.”
Live Panel uses data from a variety of GroupM data sources and disciplines including BrandZ, which tracks brand equity; TNS Connected Life (digital media consumption); and Kantar Worldpanel and Kantar Shopcom, which track purchase behaviour.
Goldhersz said GroupM had already used Live Panel to create “interesting” audience segments for clients and activate them programmatically. Subsequent surveys of those segments enabled it to understand their attitudes and key drivers of those behaviours in order to replicate that success.
GroupM has been actively building its data capabilities in recent years. It expanded its Data Alliance service into Africa and India last year, and earlier this year entered into a data sharing partnership with the Chinese tech giant Tencent, which boasts a reported 860 million active monthly users.
“Every client is highly interested and engaged with data,” said Goldhersz. “It’s a core part of their strategies. What we try to do us help our clients understand how they can use our data assets to solve their challenges or go to market more effectively.”
