Audience Data Sessions Q&A with ShareThis

Michael Gorman, SVP of Product and Marketing at ShareThis, shares insights into why it’s so powerful to harness behavioral data from across the open web, and his predictions for a cookie-less future in the context of increasing focus on data quality and consumer privacy.

ShareThis has a reputation as one of the world’s premier behavioral and interest data providers. Can you share more information about the ShareThis business?

ShareThis has carved out a truly unique position in the data space by making user signals of interest and intent, from across the open web, actionable for marketers. The ShareThis content sharing tool that is ubiquitous - currently on over 3MM websites - is the source for anonymized, permissioned observation of user behavior and engagement at scale. These signals are organized into highly customizable audience segments that can be used for insights and targeting across the ad tech ecosystem. 

How are your audiences relevant for advertisers?

By harnessing real-time signals from real human behavior across the open web, ShareThis helps advertisers reach key consumers who have shown recent, relevant interest and intent. In addition to targeting, ShareThis Audience Insights give advertisers key insight into the mindset of their customers, driving the kind of knowledge that can inform new marketing campaigns. 

How should advertisers best use your audiences?

ShareThis audiences are designed to be flexible and to address the specific goals of marketers. While over 1,000 standardized audience segments are available to address common target audiences across verticals, ShareThis also employs a powerful custom audience builder that we use to create audience segments that are precisely tailored to the consumers an advertiser wants to reach. For example, a CPG brand launching a new gluten-free pasta line can reach consumers who have shared or shown interest in gluten-free products, food and content within the last 30 days, giving them access to consumers who are more likely to purchase. 

What are your data predictions for 2021?

While it has been a long time coming, there are now real efforts happening to address both data quality and consumer privacy concerns and that will only continue in earnest in 2021. 

• Until recently, there hasn’t been much in the way of standardized norms for evaluating data aimed at reducing poor or misrepresented data. Thankfully, with initiatives such as IAB’s Data Label and Neutronian’s Data Quality Seal, marketers are gaining the ability to evaluate the quality of data they rely on based on industry standards and independent review. This will serve to further purge low quality data from the ecosystem. 
• The deprecation of the third-party cookie will drive our industry to innovate new ID solutions. Over time, I believe this will lead us to approaches that increase consumer privacy and control. Cookies have been with us for a long time. As a means of identification, the cookie was widespread, and it was free. It was a ‘good enough’ ID tool that by its success, prevented a lot of innovation in solving the issues of consumer trust and data control that we are facing.  
• While the idea of a universal ID is commonly mentioned as a solution, in reality, expect multiple “not-quite” universal ID solutions to become available, in addition to a host of private ID solutions, all of which will require synchronization in the background to enable data exchange among technology partners, agencies and advertisers.

With Eyeota, ShareThis audiences are available globally for omnichannel campaign activation on display, mobile and social channels including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat. For more information about ShareThis, connect with an audience specialist today at datadesk@eyeota.com.