Mail Advertising: “The industry needs to move away from lazy stereotypes”

It showcased three of its key planning tools: ‘Pulse surveys’; ‘Audience profiler’; and ‘Trending topics’.

The business is in the midst of a significant shift, we were told, as it evolves into an organisation that can provide audience insights and content analytics.

Mail Advertising’s Head of Marketing and Creative, Ryan Uhl, kicked off the session by urging advertisers to bear in mind human psychology and bias, at all times. 

Warning of the echo chamber online, he said that these tools can help marketers to avoid ‘judging an audience by its cover’ and thereby coming to inaccurate conclusions.  

He urged the audience to ‘challenge preconceived ideas and identify real passions and interests’, adding: “Our print and digital brands tap into the British public and cater to a broad range of people.”

Uhl then introduced to the stage Bedir Aydemir, Product Marketing and Insight Director at MailOnline, to showcase its latest analytics tools.

“We want to pivot as a business to become a strategy and insight resource.The industry as a whole is looking to move away from lazy stereotypes,” declared Aydemir, adding: “We hit every type of person with every type of content.  

“We realise these insights may not be activated on our platform. We just want to be a useful partner,” he said. 

Pulse surveys offers ‘always on’ surveying of MailOnline’s audiences in order to enable advertisers to find out what certain groups of people feel and think about any given topic. “We can write up a survey and send results in 48 hours. We are not reliant on a panel and we can really get under the skin of a group,” Aydemir explained. “All that is required is that you send us three to four questions and we serve them out that day. Typically we get 500 responses in a matter of hours.”

Meanwhile, Audience profiler enables advertisers to build rich portraits based on what people are doing on MailOnline. Planners can choose one of 400 audiences or build a customised segment. 

Trending topics was the newest tool outlined today. This offers targeting opportunities which clients can tailor to a specific vertical, interest, topic, or trend. “Other publishers are also coming to market with this type of tool, but for us it’s a bit different as you start by defining the moment that matters to you and we set up an alert system,” Aydemir pointed out.

Next, Lauren Dick, MailOnline’s Head of Emerging Platforms, urged the audience to focus on building ongoing relationships, where possible; and Christophe Castagnera, Head of Connected Experiences at Imagination Technologies, outlined how this can be done. He pointed, by way of example, to an event produced for Jaguar to launch its first SUV, the F-PACE, which involved the car doing a huge ‘loop the loop’, roller-coaster style. “You can’t fake an event.  If it’s boring nobody comes,” he said. “Partnering with media channels can allow this type of spectacle to go much further. You can continue with a longer burn of conversation. 

“Design experiences around insights; and then work backwards,” was his advice.