Foxcatcher: The digital economy demands more simple, sustainable solutions
Keeping data simple but effective in an overcomplicated landscape is becoming a rare commodity in the performance media space. It’s a challenge that Foxcatcher’s Marcus Betschel, general manager – operations and growth, and Varun John, general manager – head of trading, are on a mission to achieve.
Betschel and John lead the team at Foxcatcher, part of the RyanCap parent group, which this week was acquired by french-based group Labelium. The move showcases the importance of the mission.
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Speaking to Mediaweek, Betschel flagged, “The next big challenge is often the one that is already here and people haven’t wrestled with yet.
“Cookie deprecation has been spoken about so consistently for a number of years, yet it is still surprising to see so many businesses without a solution or even plan to position themselves in the best way so as not to hinder their marketing plans.”
Betschel described how their data ecosystem, built off proprietaries like FoxTag and WorldView, is a “continued evolution of data and technology that allows [us] to spend money for the right message, to the right people at the right time.”
In their efforts for a more effective and sustainable approach to marketing, valuable lessons and demonstrated solutions regarding privacy and targeting, as well as minimising campaign wastage, come to the fore.
Privacy and targeting solutions
For Betschel and John, the catalyst for this latest evolution was FoxTag, a pixel built to collect data and understand cross-channel audience behaviours from anonymous identifiers, generating a single, unique identity solution they refer to as a “FoxID.”
“FoxTag assigns a unique identifier for every unique user we see,” John explained, “the first party identifier gives us persistence, and it’s through our data partnerships and activation partners, combined with advanced modelling techniques that we’re able to scale, model and retarget users.”
This global network of partnerships includes such platforms as The Trade Desk, Index Exchange, InMobi, and Magnite.
It’s a solution they attest enables smarter, more effective marketing across walled gardens, affording “a broader view” of campaign performance and ROI, as well as the ability to “understand” targeting and performance at a device, user and household level.
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John gave the example of a “live entertainment client” who tasked Foxcatcher with driving engagement and consideration, “leading to increased ticket sales through a multi-channel strategy using our FoxGraph household targeting.”
He recalled how Foxcatcher was able to target the same users across BVOD and Display, “with BVOD driving awareness, followed by Display allowing the users the option to engage with the brand, leading to increased engagement and consideration,” adding, “Reach and Frequency was [also] crucial to the overall outcome.”
The strategy saw a 20% increase in site engagement, and a 29% improvement in CPA.
Minimising wastage
“We all know that now there are many businesses and agencies touting programmatic services,” Betschel observed, implying the lack of sophisticated data inputs and custom segments to control campaign budgets with nuance.
In contrast, he argued that with Foxcatcher’s CDP, WorldView, “We have automation of programmatic buying, augmented by contextual control.”
“What does that mean?” He continued, “We can tailor and plot the control of automated bidding based on contextual data inputs for things like weather, social brand sentiment or conversation tracking.”
WorldView takes sentiment signals from social channels and other macro indicators such as news headlines, fuel price, weather, and temperature forecasts that are likely to influence if, when and how a consumer may engage.
The pair cites the platform’s ultimate ability, which is to maximise campaign performance over its lifetime by determining the most appropriate times to be in market, versus less opportune times where budget is better off being conserved.
John recounted a time where, “WorldView was activated mid campaign for an entertainment client promoting tickets to their new show.” He elaborated, “Spend was increased in moments of high sentiment to capitalise on increased engagement which resulted in a surge in ticket sales, reducing their CPA by 89%.”
He spotlighted another scenario, where the Foxcatcher team applied the WorldView market sentiment strategy against a finance and share trading client. “The strategy helped drive new user sign ups during a time where share markets and investor sentiment had been affected by the global economy.”
It was a strategy that garnered a 56% improvement in CPA compared other strategy and campaign efforts at the time.
Foxcatcher is part of the RyanCap parent group of specialist media and marketing brands including Ryvalmedia and Tightrope, led by founder and CEO, Simon Ryan.