With Its blu. Data Platform, Horizon Media and Hershey's Embark on the 'Next Wave' of Client Work

Last year, U.S.-based independent media agency Horizon Media walked away with The Hershey Company’s U.S. media business at the end of a six-month media review. One key to winning the business? Horizon's proprietary data platform, blu. Hershey’s invited every holding company to participate in the review, according to Charlie Chappell, vp of media at Hershey’s. During the process, he scrutinized each competitors' platform. All of Horizon's competitors—the large holding companies—have one. A CPG brand like Hershey’s already has broad reach. It needed a solution backed by a wealth of data that could reach almost everybody in the U.S., but that solution had to be able to identify individuals’ needs. “It’s hard as a CPG,” said Chappell, noting that it began the review with the hopes of reaching beyond its traditional demographic targets. “We did the pitch to see how each holding company was setting up their identity solutions. We really wanted to use the process to understand that and say, ‘How could that be applied to our particular situation as a CPG, which is probably the most challenged?’” Horizon won Hershey’s U.S. media account, taking it from IPG’s Universal McCann and Dentsu’s Accordant. It began its work with the candy company last July and Hershey's leaders say the platform was a big factor in the decision. “They were all-in on this solution. They figured out how to integrate it into everything that we do," said Chappell, adding that he didn't get the same sense from the holding companies. This Story Is Part of a Series About Media Agencies' Data Platforms. See Part 1: How Omnicom's Data Platform Omni Helps Clorox Clean Up Backed by TransUnion All of the large media agencies have built or bought comprehensive solutions that manage media workflows. Horizon’s data platform, called blu., sits atop 238 million individuals’ TransUnion data records. The agency created blu.ID—a unique numerical code that represents a real person—on the backs of the TransUnion data. Personally-identifiable information (PII), like an individual’s first name, last name, telephone number, home address and email address, is tied to a single blu.ID. The number creates a way to target individuals while still preserving their privacy. The ID’s are the connective tissue between the platform and other second-party data sources that are opted-in directly from the source. The data connects to the IDs using identifiers including an individual’s email, name, phone number or physical address. “If you think of an Excel sheet, they'd be going down column A, and then across all of ‘A’ through ‘XYZ’ would be all the different individual atomic-level attributes that we have,” said said Megan Phelan, blu.’s svp and head of product at Horizon Media. Before it began using blu., Hershey's targeted its customers using traditional demographic targets, pushing ads to adults aged 18 to 49, or women aged 35 to 54. “Then you're sort of building your targeting on top of that, depending on what you could do on the platform,” said Chappell. The company would bring data from third parties when possible to enrich its targeting, but going into its pitch last year it was looking for a novel way to connect with its audience. Complete data integration Like Omnicom’s Omni platform, blu. operates on data-agnostic strategic partnerships. It supports data integrations with second-party partners and matches that data with that of TransUnion to glean insights on the individual level. “We're looking for partners that can provide their data at the individual level so we can map it to a blu.ID. We don't want to aggregate datasets. We don't want large proxy datasets. We want individual datasets at what we call ‘the atomic level,’ so that we can build this one-to-one, this fine dataset as robust as possible.” said Jake Phillips, evp managing partner at Horizon Media. By matching TransUnion data with second-party data, planners can create segments based on certain individuals’ attributes and target them at certain stages in the sales journey. The agency could determine if a certain individual purchased Kit Kats—and how many—and then tailor a campaign to their purchasing habits. Or, if Hershey’s wants to retain customers who spend upwards of $50 or more on candy within a certain time period, it can isolate their blu.ID’s in a segment and further segment the audience based on characteristics like location or if they are a parent. The system is not absent from challenges. Second-party data may skew toward a certain demographic, Phelan noted. Individuals who have not interacted with the partner are obscured from view, and this can lead to inaccuracies. To combat these, Horizon creates synthetic panels within the data and adds weights so that data reflects the U.S. population. If data is missing, a planner can still use blu. to create look-a-like audiences when needed. According to Phelan, a planner can create two separate segments—one with a higher accuracy, targeting individuals and another with lower accuracy and more scale. This tactic allows a buyer to bid differently and optimize the campaign more precisely. Partners’ connective tissue The agency’s partnerships with DSPs like The Trade Desk enables media to reach the intended individuals—not just a look-a-like audience. Once a team isolates a segment of blu.IDs, it can push it to the Trade Desk or other buying platforms and send ads to the exact people it planned to. The old systems led to agencies inadvertently targeting different audiences, which skewed metrics and bred inaccuracies. The platform also allows the team to compare segments by product. Once the team receives all the data segments, it can create a taxonomy and narrow down a group of individuals, like the subset of individuals who purchase Kit Kats and craft beer, for example. (An example shared with Adweek, showed there were over 8,700 people in that particular segment) The platform’s integration with DSPs allow buyers to view the previous month’s match rate. This means that a planner could see how many of those 8,700 individuals it could reach buying media via DSPs like The Trade Desk. Horizon’s partnership with those DSPs in most cases enables the agency to target the real individuals tied to blu.IDs—all-but guaranteeing campaigns reach the intended audience. When a planner pushes a blu. segment to The Trade Desk, they can see the blu.ID in The Trade Desk interface and execute the buy, sending personalized ads to the real individuals within the segment. End-to-end media workflow Hershey’s media budget is fully-integrated, meaning that instead of operating different channels like performance or awareness in silos, it plans everything together. The platform helps Hershey’s understand if the same people are buying two of its products, like Reese's and Kit Kats, and allocate that budget in the most appropriate way. “We really knew we had a lot of overlap," said Chappell, adding, “The biggest thing that it has done is helped us to get to a deeper level of sophistication and our targeting than we had before." The next wave of client work The platform makes media more addressable, meaning that it's easier to tell if media reached the intended audience. “You can get very precise in terms of measurement and analysis,” said Paula Connard, blu.’s evp and chief personalization officer at Horizon Media. With its data integrations and the blu.ID, the platform can tell if an individual completed a desired action. “It’s a good way to track everything from strategy through optimization, as you go throughout the process with your clients.” The measurement also extends to revealing product-level insights, like which stores require more or less stock at certain times of the year. Hershey’s now integrates its own data with blu. “We see this as the next wave of how to work with a client. Clients are building out their own analytics and data science, or BI team,” said Connard. “We can actually be using the same data. They can apply their lens, we can apply our lens and then just work together to figure out how to optimize, or how to make investment changes." Why the Hershey’s Media Pitch Points to the Future of Agency Sourcing