80% of online advertising fails to reach its intended audience - that's an $11 billion "fail". This white paper explores how advertisers & marketers can reach with certainty, enabling a hyper-focus on high value opportunities

1. An Acxiom White Paper
Reach with Certainty

2. Acxiom
While online contextual and behavioral insights abound, an
important insight — knowledge that a visitor is, in fact, your
intended audience — fails on an epic scale: as much as 80%
according to some estimates1. Considering the global market
reached $14 billion in 20092, that’s an $11 billion “fail.”
The lack of certainty also causes a more insidious problem. When brands can’t reach with certainty, they overspend
on low value customers and prospects, and under spend on high value opportunities. Given the top 30% customers/
prospects are typically five times more profitable3; the lack of certainty costs advertisers huge profits.
Finally, most innovation (agency trading desks and demand-side platforms) focus more upon disintermediating existing
ad networks rather than solving the audience certainty problem. While good for tech investors, this innovation does
little for brands.
Advertising is like a box of chocolates: you never know who you’re gonna get
Guided by his mother’s famous advice, Forrest Gump took us all on an unpredictable, humorous journey. In online
advertising, unfortunately, uncertainty is far from a laughing matter.
If brands and direct response marketers could reach with certainty, they would…
• Filter out the unintended/undesired, such as promiscuous buyers with little loyalty intent, or those in an unserved
geography
• Double-down on desirable relationships — those who cross-buy, who stay, who recommend, and who have lower
service costs
• Version the message to drive engagement/conversion. For the first time, online creative can connect with proprietary
brand personas with certainty
Reaching with certainty also enables monumental progress in measuring advertising effectiveness. Attributing financial
results to advertising/marketing spend is hard, exacerbated by low confidence that an audience was actually reached
(let alone positively influenced). Improvements in effectiveness of 10-30% across all media (not just online) via proper mix
optimization are realistically achievable.
REACH WITH CERTAINTY 1

3. Acxiom
“Houston, we have a problem.”
Commander James Lovell’s famous words were the call to action for the dramatic Apollo 13 rescue mission. Advertising’s
call to action is found in the disturbing variances between branded website traffic and consumers with intent. Said
another way, most branded sites are not getting their fair share of high value visitors. Consider the following masked
example, comparing consumer lifestages for a major financial services brand, its competitors, and those with intent.
Bank #1 Bank #2 Bank #3
UV Index
UV Index
UV Index
PersonicX Consumer Segments PersonicX Consumer Segments PersonicX Consumer Segments
Intent to Purchase Intent to Purchase Intent to Purchase
Buy Life Insurance Very Likely Buy Financial Products Very Likely Buy Insurance Very Likely
Homeowner or Personal Property
UV Index
UV Index
UV Index
PersonicX Consumer Segments PersonicX Consumer Segments PersonicX Consumer Segments
Of course, different brands appeal to different audiences (these three banks show a wide variance). More importantly, like
this example, most major brands are over-represented in marginal/low value traffic and under-represented in high value
traffic. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a marketing crisis.
In response, brands often turn to broadcast television or online advertising on major destination sites. Unfortunately, their
homogenous viewers/traffic makes it difficult to select just the audiences that matter. Consider the following examples,
comparing selected online destinations and separately, viewership for the major broadcast networks.
2 REACH WITH CERTAINTY

4. Acxiom
Publisher #1 Publisher #2 Publisher #3
148 MM UVs 96 MM UVs 56 MM UVs
200 200 200
150 150 150
UV Index
UV Index
UV Index
100 100 100
50 50 50
0 0 0
PersonicX Consumer Segments PersonicX Consumer Segments PersonicX Consumer Segments
Network TV #3 Network TV #1 Network TV #2
200 200 200
150 150 150
UV Index
UV Index
UV Index
100 100 100
50 50 50
0 0 0
PersonicX Consumer Segments PersonicX Consumer Segments PersonicX Consumer Segments
A mass approach, even when digital, simply exacerbates the alarming chasm between high value customers and
branded site traffic. Unless, of course, you can reach just those customers/prospects who matter...and only those
segments…with certainty.
We’re not in Kansas, anymore.
In successfully finding her
CONCENTRATION TRADITIONAL VARIANCE
way home to Kansas, Campaign Cost
Impression Volume 37,500,000 100,000,000
Dorothy cleverly adapted Cost per Thousand $800 $300
to the circumstances in Oz. Total Campaign Cost $300,000 $300,000
Today’s marketers need to Revenue Generated
Revenue/Conversion $500 $250
adapt by concentrating ad Purchase Rate .02% .01%
spend on those most likely Total Conversions 7,500 10,000
Total Revenue $3,750,000 $2,500,000 $1,250,000 50% higher
to be valuable, leveraging
Total Revenue/Ad Dollar $12.50 $8.00 $4.17 50% higher
newly available “reach with
certainty” tactics. CLTV $4,000 $1,250
Total CLTV $30,000,000 $12,500,000 $17,500,000 140% higher
The increase in consumer savings rate has reduced U.S. consumer spending by $1.7 trillion/year4. Rather than simply
spending more to attract a more frugal consumer, advertisers are better served by leveraging the concentration multiplier
principle. By “concentrating” on high value segments, reached with certainty, advertisers can drive a 3-5 fold “multiple” in
value per ad dollar invested.
REACH WITH CERTAINTY 3

5. Acxiom
Your audience. Addressable anywhere. Reached with certainty.
To reach with certainty requires consumer insight, technology and compliance with privacy best practices.
Acxiom enables marketers to reach just their audience with certainty across:
• 200 million Internet portraits
• 70 million mobile portraits
• 86 million permission-based email addresses Advertisers
• 650 million social portraits Publishers
• 122 million postal households
Collaboration
• 6 million TV households
Your personas, segments, and models reach intended Target
audiences with certainty. Audience Set
You drive awareness, consideration, intent and
Available
favorability with certainty. Impressions
Insight into media effectiveness, throughout the purchase
cycle and across channels, improves because your
customers and prospects are reached with certainty.
Taking the first step
Contact Acxiom for a complementary assessment. Often, reaching with certainty can be entirely funded by remixing
existing media expenditures.
Acxiom profile (www.acxiom.com)
• 5,700 clients in 40 countries • Manage/execute 250,000 campaigns per year
• Compile and update information on on behalf of clients
500 million consumers around the world • Engage 375 million customers per month
• Perform 83 billion customer recognition • Maintain over 4,000 databases on behalf
events per month of clients
• Perform 18 trillion customer updates/year • Manage 23,000 servers on behalf of clients
• Evaluate 65,000 privacy policies/year • Manage 3,000 client service requests per day
1
ComScore, 2009
2
eMarketer, 2010
3
Acxiom, average analysis of customers
4
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (http://www.bea.gov/BRIEFRM/SAVING.HTM)
(http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=58&Freq=Qtr&FirstYear=2007&LastYear=2009)
4 REACH WITH CERTAINTY

6. See how Acxiom can work for you.
For more information, visit our website
at www.acxiom.com or call:
1.888.3ACXIOM
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