Demand Signals

An always-on, agile approach to measure, optimize and interact with your marketing plans while re-informing traditional approaches

Predictive analytics for marketing optimization and measurement used to be informed by and relied on limited data sets, usually only marketing or media focused and updated in an episodic manner. Companies would make decisions using models powered by essentially historical averages to update their marketing plans.

Today the game has changed and relying on historical models alone is not enough. Companies are gaining competitive advantages by using a range of data sources that are dynamically being woven together in real-time to identify potential marketplace changes and the impact they might have on companies plans.

The reads from these ‘demand signals’ are being used to drive marketing decisions and demand planning on almost a daily basis.  CMOs and CFOs want to be connected to their investments and customers in a way that maximizes the most profitable or share growing sales.  Enter the world of agile marketing. Today’s models use real-time marketplace, consumer, and digital signals that can be integrated into highly granular, meaningful taxonomies that enable outputs that re-inform historical models and guide changes in potential impact.

The Situation:

COVID-19 was a catalyst for ‘demand signals’ as it dramatically altered advertising strategies and left planners uncertain. Some marketers went dark, others became promotionally focused, and brand building was marginalized for the year.

Demand signals that were historically easy to measure and fed into predictive models became much more difficult to read. Changes in shopping behavior, media consumption and social interaction impacted consumer segments differently across geographies.  Purchasing behaviors became more unpredictable and traditional media planning methods needed to adapt and become more agile.

And coming out of Covid, not only had behaviors changed but so had the financial outlook for consumers, with inflation sky-rocketing and the risk of a potential recession looming.

The Solution:

Demand Signals Multi Touch Attribution

In March of 2020, Ipsos MMA embarked on a solution to that would provide its client and agency partners with a solution that enabled them to plan in ‘client time’ with the most recent and relevant of data and data signals – what we call ‘demand signals’. This project integrated relevant data points in order to support marketing and financial objectives in real-time:

  1. Significantly enhance and enrich the taxonomy of available digital, consumer, macro-economic and trending data sources
  2. Leverage intelligent automation to read the enriched data to provide real-time Demand Signals dynamically
  3. Leverage the Demand Signals to dynamically re-inform models, and, if necessary, recalibrate them, building new plans to test and scale in-market
  4. Provide a consistent and powerful data taxonomy across categories, industries and geographies that further enhances Ipsos MMA’s Benchmark Database in real-time, driving media innovations and successes
  5. Provide clients with daily and weekly reads into marketing dynamics as well as trending details that are shaping marketplace demand

This industry leading advancement enables companies to measure any media execution or marketplace situation in a ‘live and always on’ manner, capturing potential impacts and interactions in real-time, enabling companies to be more agile and make informed and accurate decisions based upon evolving consumer demand and marketplace conditions.