How Ranker created 1,000+ cohorts for in-session targeting across all browsers
The company
The challenge
Ranker needed a next-generation solution to take the place of the first wave of Data Management Platforms. Ranker also found that many buyers were increasingly asking the media company to define and determine the uses of their first-party data.
After testing the validity of other providers, Ranker chose Permutive for its forward-thinking, privacy-safe approach to first-party data and edge computing capabilities. By choosing Permutive, Ranker went to market with their first-party data much faster than if they had built their own proprietary platform. “We found that Permutive was the most aligned on our privacy requirements, the real-time build and customization of cohorts, and making sense of our first-party data to align cleanly with our own taxonomy,” said Dana OMalley, National VP of Sales at Ranker.
"As the industry figures out the privacy piece, it helps our clients feel confident that we have a strategy in place for dealing with the ongoing changes around third-party cookies and privacy regulation."
JR Hoffman, Senior Director of Sales Operations & Planning at Ranker
The solution
Using Permutive, Ranker created high-intent audiences based on first-party data, collected from a variety of unique visitor data. This includes site votes, surveys, behaviour, and context. Ranker also has the ability to create lookalike audiences. The seeds are broken out by content category through IAB segmentation combined with Ranker’s contextual taxonomy. This enabled them to increase scale across various direct, private marketplace, and programmatic guarantee campaigns, and optimize all these in their partnership with one of the top four streaming services.
Testing contextual versus first-party cohorts
Ranker ran tests for the streaming service campaign, starting with contextual targeting across all the client’s audience interests in week one. While those ran, Ranker built cohorts from its higher intent audiences via Permutive, which were applied in week two and resulted in lift across the board.
Reactive to proactive insights
Ranker uses pre-sale audience affinities to craft proposals and post-sale analysis, helping position campaign success and insights back to their advertisers. Ranker previously relied on being reactive to cohorts that they built. The team can now identify affinities and intent based on a combination of different activities, such as voting data, page view data and affiliate link data for each campaign, all in real-time using Permutive’s edge technology. This provides a view on what impacts campaigns from a scale and performance perspective.
Deeper audience understanding
The insights Ranker provides help advertisers understand more about the audience that’s clicking on their display ads and viewing their video ads; Ranker can tell advertisers what their users are doing and their other interests and likes, demonstrating the value of their unique first-party data cohorts. These insights include pre-, mid- and post-campaign data designed to inform planning, mid-flight optimization and future targeting.
4X
25%
175%
Results
4x increase in revenue year-on-year
31% increase in click-through rate
CPSV lowered by 26%
Next steps
Ranker is excited about the ongoing growth and refinement of its data segment and data collection strategy. The publisher is continuing to build on its taxonomy and creating first-party cohorts for advertisers. They are also testing Permutive’s modelling for seeded audiences, providing a robust go-to-market for advertisers who previously may not have had a clear reason to work with Ranker in the past.
From an integration perspective, Ranker will use audience survey capabilities within Permutive to fill gaps in data, for example, building demographic cohorts such as age to then model out. In addition, they will offer clients brand lift surveys to measure campaign performance and insights surveys to offer partners more information on their customers.
