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Online Ad Platform Snares Nielsen PRIZM Segments for Household-Level Targeting

Nielsen and DataLogix are working together to push household level online ad targeting, using Nielsen’s PRIZM demographic and lifestyle targeting data. The move will improve the ability of online advertisers to reach the people most likely to buy their products and services, the companies say.

This is the first time brand advertisers will be able to use Nielsen’s PRIZM segmentation at a household-level of accuracy in their online campaigns, according to [pdf] DataLogix.

Under the agreement, DataLogix’s Affiniti Data Platform, which enables media companies and agencies to find internet users based on offline behaviors and attributes, has strengthened its online targeting capabilities by adding Nielsen’s PRIZM lifestyle segmentation, which provides precise lifestyle and product purchase segments. In the new offering, each household in the Affiniti database will be assigned to one of Nielsen’s 66 PRIZM segments, which group Americans based on demographics, lifestyles, shopping patterns and media preferences.

Nielsen PRIZM segments – which have designations such as Blue Blood Estates, Young Digerati, and Country Squires, depending on the lifestyle and demographic represented—have been used for more than 35 years by advertisers and marketers in the U.S. to understand who their best customers are, what these customers are like, and where and how to reach them.

Eric Roza, pres of DataLogix, says that PRIZM segments fuel the traditional marketing spending decisions of many of the country’s largest brand advertisers. Affiniti’s “anonymous addressability, unmatched scale, and seamless integration with leading agencies, ad networks and publishers,” will allow Nielsen to offer all of their clients a “true multi-screen segmentation solution for the first time,” he adds.

The system will identify users through retail transactions, using cookies and other data. Only non-personally identifiable information will be used, writes ClickZ.

The move is interesting in that online marketers have long touted the addressability of online advertising. Now, online advertisers are being offered a way to use “surrogate data” to define the behavior of the online user, MediaPost points out.

Nielsen’s senior vp of marketing and strategy Justin Evans says that PRIZM will not replace behaviorally based online targeting, but will ideally complement it, giving a 360-degree view of the consumer.