How MailOnline leverages 3.5 million user data for targeted advertising

By Anisa Holmes

DMG Media is a media juggernaut. The media conglomerate, which comprises multiple brands from the Daily Mail to Metro, boasts an audience of more than 70% of the UK population plus many thousands more abroad. Each business operates as a separate entity with its own key data sets. This data represent a huge financial opportunity, so long as it can be wrangled, standardized and assessed in a systematic way.

“Are we leaving money under the bed?” Lauren Dick, Head of Emerging Platforms at MailOnline asks the audience. “We’ve been hoarding data, with everyone operating in silos, using different naming conventions and taxonomies.” Essentially, Dick explains, DMG had been sitting on a treasure trove of data, waiting for it to be standardized in order to explore its full potential. So, starting in 2016 DMG implemented an ongoing 3 phase process in order to capitalize on the true value of its data: Know, Engage & Monetize.

The Know Phase is all about understanding the DNA of their business, digging deep into the current landscape, and activating dormant data. This process includes conducting supplier audits, customer overviews, and examinations of different data sources.

The Engage Phase is largely based on using their analytics platform, Real Time Analytics 2 (RTA2) to help improve performance and audience engagement on content. RTA2 is a highly sophisticated tool that provides automated responses to analysts in order for them to troubleshoot and restrategize editorial decisions. RTA2 can use a variety of attributes, everything from impression values to loyalty schemes, purchase behaviour and frequent usership. All these attributes together form the Customer Engagement Index, from which customer experience can be strategically tailored to audience groups. RTA2 also informs data projects, tailored for each business unit’s needs.

The Monetize Phase deals with audience consent, engagement and personalization. GDPR proved the greatest challenge to this phase. DMG created its own consent protocol and integrated it into the 3 phase process.

Dick’s hope for the future of Emerging Platforms at DMG is that data can be used for further predictive modeling applications and to move towards building a robust data marketplace. Data is a huge commodity, and with set standards and properly applied value, it can be used to drive significant revenue for media groups.