CBS Outdoor Canada has partnered with Toronto-based Manifold Data Mining, a micro-marketing data and analytic service, adding its extensive consumer insights to its existing smart mapping technology.
Manifold’s SuperDemographics.com tool uses data mined from sources such as BBM Canada’s “return to sample” study to determine factors such as lifestyle, retail and product usage down to the FSA level (forward sortation area, or the first three characters of a postal code).
CBS is now able to attach that information to its existing smart mapping capabilities, a database of more than 600 custom destinations (such as banks, retail stores, leisure destinations) that it has been building for the past several years.
Michelle Erskine, director of marketing for CBS in Toronto, said that the new tool will enable the company to provide clients with a comprehensive picture of which of its out-of-home inventory can help them best achieve their marketing objectives.
“It’s going to help us give clients additional confidence that we’re able to skew the campaign or pick locations that are best for them,” said Erskine, who played a key role in forging the relationship with Manifold.
“You can map people who intend to buy a condo in two years, or people who want to buy an SUV.”
The out-of-home company had previously been limited to more standard demographic information obtained from Statistics Canada, such as household income and age range.
“The evolution of geographic information systems is just so good for out-of-home,” said Erskine. “Everybody now uses Google maps and mapping software, so mapping, which has been important to us but not something the general public was using all that much, is now evolving really rapidly.”
The free service has already been used to inform an upcoming out-of-home campaign for a client in Winnipeg that was looking to connect with museum-goers. Another recent instance saw CBS link consumers who have shown a fondness for wine coolers with the location of LCBO stores in their vicinity, all overlaid with a map of nearby out-of-home inventory.
“It’s just amazing what we can do,” said Erskine. “It gives us the ability to open up a conversation about how out-of-home works.”
