Quantium marries 'big data' with behavioural approach

Following a collaboration with Ooh!Media, Quantium has been described as the 'poster child for a new wave of technology platforms,' with the potential to eradicate more outdated methods of advertising. Quantium differs from most advertising platforms in that it focuses on behavioural data, rather than market research. Platforms such as Quantium allow advertisers to think about their creative based on consumer knowledge, and how to target different segments.

Naked Communications chief strategy officer, Brett Rolfe

Quantium and Don Draper make uncomfortable bedfellows.

The golden age of advertising was built on two fundamental half-truths. The first was the indeterminacy of results, perhaps best summed up by Lord Leverhulme when he complained that he didn’t know which half of his ad spend was being wasted. The second half-truth was the independence of message and medium, leading to the separation of media and creative under the comfortable, flickering glow of mass media.

The result was a perfect marriage of clients and agencies, blissfully blindfolded and hand-in-hand. They enjoyed some of the longest lunches, most extravagant parties in the south of France and least necessary European TV shoots in history. Good times indeed. The creative egotists got on with making big, sexy ads, and the media geeks found high reach, high frequency places to put them. And everyone quietly agreed that trying to figure out if it was actually working was all a bit too hard.

But it wasn’t all whiskey and roses. Right from the beginning, innovators and iconoclasts sought ways to break those conventions and eke out disproportionate advantage for their brands. They challenged the indeterminacy of results by asking how we might better close the loop and accurately measure what achieved what. They challenged the independence of media and creative by exploring the possibility of contextual messaging.

Over the years we’ve seen a lot of progress. From split AB testing to media-specific creative, to unique response numbers to QR codes, and product placement to native advertising. But we’ve also seen a lot of the status quo. Traditional creative ideas in traditional media placements.

And to be honest, it’s not surprising. The system simply isn’t broken enough. The platform isn’t burning vigorously enough. There’s still a large enough portion of spend going into the ‘broadcast’ bucket that we can close our eyes, click our heels three times and pretend that behavioural targeting and niche publications don’t exist.

It’s fascinating how the word ‘broadcast’ has retained its positive connotations. ‘Broad…cast’. It sounds so big, so serious. This is clearly media that’s not messing about. Media that gets the job done. Perhaps if we stopped calling it ‘broadcast’ and called it ‘scatter-gun’ or ‘spraying it against the wall’ we might see a change in media planning.

Much is being made of the recent partnership of Quantium and Ooh!Media – and rightly so. Quantium is the poster child for a new wave of technology platforms that put another nail in the astonishingly robust coffin of advertising’s golden age, by making the titillating but nebulous dream of ‘big data’ a reality. It grounds knowledge in concrete behaviour rather than market research, links consumer data with big, mainstream advertising properties, and wraps it all up with a bow for Australian advertisers to buy. Quantium is the next step in the ongoing journey to make advertising accountable, and brings with it the opportunity to make our communication more contextual too.

Traditional media based on fixed formats allowed media and creative to be divorced. At best we occasionally had ideas tailored to media, but only on big ticket items like a Super Bowl spot or a Masterchef sponsorship. Now with platforms like Quantium we are obliged to rethink how we inform our creative with consumer knowledge, and how we develop executions against different segments within our audience. To succeed at this new game, strategic thinking will need to be plugged into the creative process, flexibly making the most of the increasingly targeted media space and specific behavioural insights at our disposal.

In short, there are fewer and fewer excuses to do paint-by-numbers advertising.

Over time we will be left with two sorts of advertisers. Those steadfastly fumbling along in the old world - and there will be plenty of them - using big, dumb media and blunt creative, as they always have. But they will be competing with leaner, hungrier, more nimble advertisers. Brands that are crafting their ideas and communication to shift and change across the media landscape in response to increasingly nuanced context and insight.

No prizes for guessing who will still be left standing in ten years.

By Brett Rolfe, chief strategy officer at Naked Communications (an Enero Group company).