Audience Data Sessions: Q&A with YouGov

Can you introduce yourself and your audience solutions?

I’m Dörthe Jans, Director of Audience Data at YouGov, and part of YouGov’s global Advertising Solutions team that helps brands and their agencies supercharge campaigns with addressable audiences and unique, highly-effective media. My role is focused on our Audience partnerships and integrations, including AdTech partners, such as Eyeota, but also agencies and brands who are looking to enrich their data and better reach their audiences with YouGov.

YouGov is an international research data and analytics group, providing the richest and most complete understanding of customers’ complex lives, can you tell us more about your business and how clients use your data?

We have been building an ever-growing source of connected consumer data for the past twenty years, which enables us and our clients to understand what 27 million+ registered panel members in over 55 markets are thinking and doing, on over a million - and growing - datapoints. This is a unique and powerful data asset, offering a rich and complete 360-degree view of consumer behavior, situation, attitude and opinion. But advertisers don’t need to stop there, many of our clients choose to customize our datasets for their needs by adding in data from custom trackers, ad-hoc surveys or bespoke segmentations. There’s then an option to share these insights with their agencies who access our data for audience and campaign planning and (brand) measurement as well. Having one shared dataset facilitates greater collaboration between advertisers and agencies.

Why have you partnered with Eyeota?

Using this very same data for activation is another game changer for many agencies, as it closes the gap between planning and activation. YouGov’s partnership with Eyeota enables us to generate additional value beyond insights for our clients and make our audiences useable for targeting across various addressable channels. Being able to distribute YouGov audiences across a range of different media channels and buying platforms, including Amazon DSP, Facebook, TTD or Google.

Tell us about YouGov audience solutions and how they can benefit advertisers.

Our market-leading audience intelligence platform has over two million unique datapoints to choose from in 49 markets – and it’s growing every day. The rich data we collect is made available to clients – both agencies and brands – to use for planning: identifying target audiences, understanding them in huge depth and then discovering where and when to advertise to them.

YouGov works with advertisers and their agencies across many verticals, such as financial services, automotive, utility providers, travel, tech & telecommunications, sports and entertainment. Next to our standard socio-demographic audiences, we can provide granular sector audiences – for example, sports fans for advertisers who want to r time campaigns for the Olympics or EURO 2024 – but can also provide audiences segmented by life stage in the last or next 12 months, such as graduating from college or buying a house.

Here are just a few specific examples of how over 1000 clients that have used YouGov advertising solutions:

• Jewellery brands targeting those getting married soon
• Global credit card providers reaching their competitors’ current customers
• Streaming platforms finding their own customers across paid media
• Telecommunication companies target tech early adopters
• Interior brand supported in reaching luxury shoppers
• Car brands promoting their newest vans to adventurous travelers

We enable clients to deliver on specific campaign objectives, creating and reaching specific audiences that meet their needs, thanks to the depth of YouGov data. We have supported clients in increasing their CTR by 400% when they started using YouGov audiences for targeting, while another saw average donation value for their charity grow by 1,100% when planning and activating with YouGov.

In which markets do you operate?

We initially started in the US, UK and Germany before then expanding into APAC and France a few years ago. Recently we were able to add Italy, Spain, Canada, Mexico and Brazil and are continuing to grow this partnership.

Can you discuss the importance of audience data in today’s digital advertising landscape?

The importance of high quality and consented audience data has grown over the last few years: The latest YouGov Profiles data shows that consumers are often feeling bombarded by advertising – 65% of Brits agree to this sentiment, similarly 68% in Germany, and even 70% in the US. However, advertisers must be careful, as 57% of British and US adults agree: “Personalized adverts creep me out”, in Germany at least 41% agree. Nevertheless, there are also those who prefer targeted and tailored ads and even assume they are more likely to engage with adverts that are tailored to them, 31% in Britain and 30% Germany, up to 48% in the US.

Along with consumer sentiment, privacy regulations have become much stricter, and the decline of the third-party cookie is forcing the industry to review existing approaches to reaching audiences and measuring the success of campaigns. Many companies have also (re-)discovered the value of their first-party data and are looking to augment this with trusted data sources, such as YouGov.

Reach out to our Audience Specialists at the Data Desk