Ask the Expert: Circana

We certainly live in fascinating times. Over the past few years, the digital ecosystem has been challenged with topics such as cookie deprecation, data privacy legislation, data protection, information security, etc. Fortunately, the shifting consumer landscape has had a minimal impact on the scale and integrity of Circana’s media products and solutions. This is because our data is consented (retailer loyalty card and receipt panel) and we have opted to hold as little personally identifiable information (PII) data as possible. Additionally, the sheer magnitude of our data assets (millions of loyalty cards), our very limited use of pixels, and our partnership with industry leading identity resolution providers helps us remain an industry leading data provider.

To minimize handling of PII, Circana’s receipt panel and retailer membership loyalty card data are first sent from the originating sources directly to Experian. Utilizing their Offline Graph, Experian matches this data using directly identifiable offline information such as name, address, telephone number, etc. Once the matching is complete and a matched output file is created, Experian strips the records of any directly identifiable information and replaces them with tokenized Circana specific household IDs.

Circana uses Experian’s expertise, their robust identity graph, and integrations across the ecosystem to maximize our cross-channel reach. With the new Data Marketplace and Experian’s acquisition of Audigent, Circana is excited to grow our mutual partnership.

Circana and Experian have and do collaborate very closely to ensure that Circana is and will remain in compliance with data privacy regulations. Our collaboration to accomplish this is multi-faceted, with Circana relying heavily on Experian’s expertise and technology.

I mentioned earlier in this interview that Circana tries to hold as little personally identifiable data as possible. We rely on Experian to ingest and process our receipt panel and retailer membership loyalty card data to remove all personally identifiable data such as name, physical address, etc. Experian matches our records to their Offline Graph database to establish identity. Once this is accomplished, Experian removes any directly identifiable information and replaces it with a tokenized household ID that is unique to Circana - meaning that the ID is unrecognizable and unusable by any other individual or organization.

Circana counts on Experian’s Offline and Digital Graphs to access offline and online identifiers to maximize cross-channel reach. We also bank on Experian’s integrations to ensure ubiquity across the ecosystem, ensuring that our products and solutions are available wherever our clients execute their campaigns.

With more recent regulations around CCPA and state level My Health My Data bills, Experian ensures that Circana audiences only include allowed households. Each week Experian provides Circana with a list of incremental opt-outs, including do not share, do not sell, and deletion requests. Experian Marketing Data, including household residency, is updated quarterly, which is critical for complying with state health bill exclusions. The accuracy of Experian’s identity solutions and their expertise offer us comfort that the right households are being removed, and only consented households are included in the audience segment.

Consumers and shoppers view content across multiple screens, often at the same time. Given this, Circana recommends that our advertisers activate against their most valuable consumers across all channels to maximize reach and frequency.

Here are some ways our audience and measurement solutions help marketers optimize their investment in TV dollars.

• Circana has recently released a new audience type called Circana Subscription Video-On Demand (SVOD) audiences which help marketers target households based on streaming behaviors. With more than 90 dimensions, Circana’s SVOD audiences enable brands to reach consumers based on genre preferences, franchises, series, and specific titles. For more information on these new audience types please visit Improve TV Advertising Campaigns with SVOD Audience Data – Circana
• Additionally, Circana’s purchase-based ProScores segments can be used to bring precision to linear TV buys. The ultimate benefit of using purchase-based audiences with linear TV exposure data is the ability to identify mix (network, program, daypart etc.) that is best aligned to sell a manufacturer’s product.
• Circana Measurement solutions help marketers effectively and efficiently manage and measure the impact of TV marketing dollars.

               - Circana’s In-Flight Optimization is a key tactic for TV campaigns and doing so allows marketers to track campaign performance in near-real time to make timely adjustments based on in-store sales. This solution enables advertisers to optimize their media buys.

               - Circana’s Household Lift measurement solution quantifies campaign impact on offline sales of the advertised product. This solution measures the uplift generated across campaign tactics such as audience type, formats, publishers, creatives, channel (including CTV), etc. By using Circana’s Cross-Channel Household Lift study, advertisers can glean insights related to the relative uplift generated by CTV and the tactics that perform best for this emerging channel.

In conjunction with Circana’s commercial team, Circana’s Product Management and Technology teams are centered on adapting and enhancing our products and solutions to ensure relevance in today’s rapidly changing environment. 

With the merger of IRI and the NPD Group, Circana now provides data for over 25 industries, representing an exponential increase in the ability to understand and target shoppers based on a more complete consumer profile and their share of wallet. While IRI was a leader in CPG and Consumer Healthcare, the NPD Group specialized in General Merchandise categories like toys, apparel, luxury beauty, consumer electronics, video games, home improvement, quick serve restaurants and more.

Circana's General Merchandise insights are powered by data from the leading omnichannel receipt panel in the U.S., covering both eCommerce and brick-and-mortar retailers like Ulta, Sephora, Macy’s, Best Buy, Apple, Lowe’s, and Target. With the most complete data and cross-industry insights, manufacturers now achieve a holistic view of the Complete Consumer™ through a single data provider. For example, a beauty product manufacturer can quickly utilize audience segments that encompass both mass-market and luxury beauty buyers, ensuring campaign objectives hit their mark. Similarly, frozen pizza brands can integrate frozen foods category (CPG) and quick-serve restaurant data (General Merchandise industry) to develop more effective audience segments for their campaigns.

Circana aims to bring precision at scale, enabling brands to reach the right consumers with the right message at the right time, maximizing effectiveness across all stages of the marketing funnel. Since the launch of our General Merchandise audiences in May 2023, Circana has gained significant traction, offering over 1,000 audience segments, including custom options. Additionally, we are launching two new audience types for General Merchandise clients:

• Circana In-Market Audiences target "In-Market Invisibles," consumers driven by short-term interest signals, predicting purchase intent within 30-60 days.

• Circana Foodservice Audiences focus away-from-home eating habits, utilizing 100+ dimensions of consumer dining behavior to boost relevance.

These audiences help brands pinpoint high-value consumers and drive impactful results with their campaigns.

Circana conducts hundreds of studies each year that measure the uplift generated by a campaign on offline product sales – you may know this solution as Circana Household Lift. Over the years we have developed a robust database that demonstrates the performance of Circana’s purchase-based audiences versus other targeting types. Our learnings from mining this database exhibits that Circana’s purchase based audiences have superior performance, in fact generating up to 6x the uplift vs. other targeting types.

To cite a case study, a frozen food manufacturer executed a national media campaign to drive sales across its product lines and understand which targeting tactics performed best at driving offline sales. Circana delivered two Complete Audiences – new buyers and retained buyers and made them available to the manufacturer’s activation partners. A Circana Household Lift study was conducted post campaign to quantify campaign performance. The study illustrated that the Complete Audiences generated a 6% incremental sales uplift, outperforming the category benchmark two times.

I would be remiss in not mentioning Circana’s In-flight Optimization solution. This solution links weekly deterministic purchases of a product (at the UPC level) to ad exposures. By understanding which tactic(s) drives the most conversion, advertisers and their agencies can optimize campaign budget towards those tactics that drive conversions, thus maximizing performance. Circana’s analyses have illustrated that when conversion data is incorporated into in-flight measurement in conjunction with Circana audiences, the resulting sales uplift can be up to 9x more than when neither audience nor inflight optimization is used.

To give you an example, the brand team at a leading carbonated beverages manufacturer was tasked with increasing sales, specifically through the acquisition of new category buyers. The manufacturer uses Circana Verified Audiences, and our sales conversions based in-flight optimization solution. A Circana Household Lift study showed that the campaign presented a 40% increase in sales uplift, outperforming the category benchmark two times. Further, the uplift was driven by household penetration, meaning that the brand successfully attracted new buyers and met their objective.

Circana’s north star is to ensure that our products and solutions are available and easily findable to advertisers and agencies wherever they plan and execute their campaigns.

As a Third-party Onboarding customer, Circana’s data has traditionally been available for social activation and for TV. Now with our expanded participation in the Experian’s marketplace within Audience Engine, we anticipate an incremental expansion of our buyer/user base as net new buyers become aware of Circana and select our audience segments to drive performance outcomes.

Circana’s ethos is to be client obsessed and relentlessly focus on creating impact. With this conviction, our priority impact accelerators are centered on our clients’ needs. Our immediate priorities are focused on four areas:

• Provide best-in-class audience targeting solutions to address all levels of the marketing funnel by bringing to bear Circana’s deterministic, behavioral datasets, including purchase (retailer membership loyalty card data, Circana receipt panel), survey (e.g., foodservice), and behavioral (e.g., subscription video panel) data.

• Enable our clients to seamlessly tie insights and analytics to activation through Circana’s industry-leading technology ecosystem (known as Liquid Data). Users will be able to create highly relevant and nuanced audiences derived from Circana receipt panel with the click of a mouse.

• Meet marketers where they are by having audiences and in-flight optimization in every platform and by giving marketers flexibility to commingle 1st and 3rd party datasets, conduct analyses, build audiences, and measure results in the clean room environments of their choosing.

• In conjunction with client partners, assist clients to drive outcomes by refining/optimizing their media buy based on historic performance.

Through the above areas of innovation, Circana will facilitate our clients to use insights to identify new opportunities, activate against their most valuable customer and measure the impact of their ad campaigns, demonstrating performance and sparking growth.