Quantcast Is Making Its Audience Insights Tool Available to Marketers
Data shows brand affiliation during the Covid-19 pandemic varied by generation
Quantcast, a company that has traditionally provided audience analytics to publishers, is making its suite of services available to marketers.
This week, the company presented its observations of consumer behaviors since quarantine measures began across the U.S. as part of the IAB NewFronts, with such insights now available to the buy-side of the industry.
“We’re making the products that we’ve been using internally for insight analysis … that has been used as part of the Q for Publishers product suite available to marketers,” said Konrad Feldman, co-founder and CEO of Quantcast. “Publishers have been using it for some time, and it’s critical for marketers to have insights.”
The rollout is the realization of two years of engineering work. Advertisers can interact with the service by running queries about specific audience types, media consumption habits and purchase history.
“For instance, we can show marketers what are the differences between people that arrive at a website, and the people that actually buy a product,” added Feldman, speaking with Adweek ahead of his NewFronts pitch.
In Quantcast’s subsequent presentation, Feldman explained that between March 9 and May 31, consumer behavior spanned from “coping with change” to “finding balance with the new norm” and eventually “the road to recovery.”
As the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic and lockdown orders began taking effect in mid-March, Quantcast saw a double-digit increase in local and international news interest.
“Understandably, everyone reacted with pessimism initially, but how we processed this varied by generation,” said Feldman in his presentation.
“Boomers reacted the most negatively, largely because they were highlighted as being more at risk. And, at the other end of the spectrum, Gen Z recovered the quickest and in the subsequent weeks, media consumption indicates a more hopeful outlook with an increase of interest in warm weather, memes and positive environmental impact.”
Understandably, one of the most popular topics of the stay-at-home era was cooking, with Quantcast observing a bifurcation over what brands the different generations gravitated toward. According to its data, Boomers gravitated toward legacy brands such as Kroger and Food Lion, while younger consumers went for specialized grocery delivery services (Good Eggs) and meal kit providers (Gosh Food).
