How Real-Time Data Is Changing The Way Marketers Understand Consumers

This post is sponsored by eXelate.

For the last 50 to 70 years, the market research industry has been focused on the same surveys and panels. (Think of those prototypical focus groups, sitting in a cramped room with two-way mirrors.) Today the $30 billion industry still relies on these old tools to get consumer insights. But there's a better, faster way to gain awareness into consumer behavior.

Software company eXelate, founded in 2006, has grown to provide the largest and most accurate data exchange on the planet. They're now trying to revolutionize the market research industry with the eXelate optiX terminal. Using various data points, the optiX terminal gives marketers better insight into how consumers behave when they decide what to buy.

The information a survey can supply is fixed and limited, but optiX, with its real-time capabilities, provides a river of information that's up-to-date and far more accurate. It's like a Bloomberg terminal that helps brand managers understand their consumers, informing the overall marketing strategy.

How It Works

Using a data pool with trillions of offline and online consumer interactions, eXelate determines which dimensions are most relevant for a consumer or brand - including demographics, passions, purchases, and TV-watching. They tag a brand's assets like websites and mobile apps, bounce that data set against their data pool, crunch everything together, and then curate a consumer index. The result? Marketers can compare their consumers to more than 800 million users in real-time.

For example, let's say an insurance company would like to know what kinds of consumers are interested in its auto versus motorcycle products, to inform a better product-specific marketing strategy. Usually, getting this kind of information would take 30 to 60 days using standard market research methodologies and tactics, but the optiX terminal provides immediate information so that marketers can make product and marketing decisions faster and more easily, prior to making any media buying decisions.

The data from optiX identifies the consumers a marketer wants to reach before the targeting process, allowing brand managers to discover which products to build, what partnerships to make, what PR messaging they should deliver, and what creative direction they should take.

Marketers now have a real-time window through which they can view today's consumer behavior, which helps them to make smarter decisions.

Learn more about optiX.