eBay Australia’s JJ Eastwood discusses the implementation of geoTribes, a new geo-demographic segmentation tool, that the company claims brings offline segmentation to online audiences for the first time.

Can you explain what eBay has done with the rollout of geoTribes for its online advertisers and what differentiates it from other offerings?

As we bring new advertising partners on-board, it’s important that we connect them with the right audience and in turn our customers receive advertising messages that are both relevant and meaningful to them. To achieve this we have team up with RDA research who have over 20years experience in geo-demographical profiling. Using Census and RBS micro survey data, RDA have segmented the entire Australian population into 15 Tribes based on their social economic status and lifestyle stage. We then worked with RDA to map our members into the 15 geo-tribes, this then gives us a better understanding of their needs and therefore we can guide our advertising clients on who to target and what messages and offers will be effective.

From a planning perspective what are the most significant changes or improvements that buyers will notice?

In today's world of information overload, it is important that marketers find ways to communicate prospective customers in a personalised manner. Consumers desire relevancy and by implementing a segmented marketing strategy, marketers can cut through the clutter and deliver the right message to the right audience, leading to increased engagement, customer loyalty and ultimately increased ROI.

How is the knowledge that eBay garners from all its data touchpoints going to help Ausralian premium brands connect with audiences online?

Marketers increasingly live in a world without borders, a world where research, CRM, acquisition, on-line and retail need to be linked through a single, easily-used segmentation and profiling framework. But what would such a scheme be based on? What are the common factors linking people of all types across geographic markets? The answer is human needs.

The relationship between needs and solutions forms the powerful underlying basis of the geoTribes segmentation framework. For example, in the category of motor vehicles, the Rockafella’s need for status, quality and recognition is met by the brand attributes of the Mercedes ‘E’ and ‘S’ class vehicles.

With the implementation of geoTribes online, will eBay Australia can compete with leading publishers in the online display market?

As the leading online shopping destination in Australia with 6.9 million visitors to the site in March alone, eBay is proud to lead the market into the next phase of online advertising, Retail Media, and offer - what we believe is - the most robust segmentation available online. As opposed to the traditional model of cookie and IP based targeting, which is fundamentally flawed, we offer advertisers the opportunity to communicate to real people in a more personal and meaningful way.

This partnership with RDA Research was originally lead by our marketing team who wanted to gain a better understanding of our member’s needs. Once our member database was segmented the obvious next step was to offer our advertising clients the opportunity to talk to the most relevant audience and ideally tailor their messages and offers to each audience. And this is now a more effective ad channel than current offerings on the market.

What types of clients, products or services will gain the greatest benefit from this improved targeting capability?

Absolutely everyone – when consumers are almost blinded by advertising these days because it’s largely irrelevant, segmentation is a way of better understanding the ‘who’ and ‘why’ of every customer.

You have been trialling this with existing clients before rolling it out to the industry at large this month. How have advertisers responded to the new platform and what benefits are they noticing?

During the introduction phase, optimal results achieved have been four-fold increases in CTR (click through rate) compared with prior performance and – more importantly – clients have doubled their ROI as a result of using geoTribes. What’s really interesting is that some clients CTR decreased but their ROI increased, this tells us that a) CTR is a weak measure when viewed in isolation and b) that some Tribes are inherently less likely to click on an ad. Clients who are achieving the best outcomes have followed a stepped process where they identify the correct geoTribe to target, then refine their messaging and offers to each tribe.