Twitter Adds Offline Shopper Data; Linda Woolley Exits TAG

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Twitter Adds Shopper Segments

Twitter added a bevy of new segments, including offline shopper, automotive and other in-market buyer data from Acxiom and Datalogix. Nestle’s Butterfinger used them to target regular buyers of peanut butter candy in-store, resulting in a 52% lift in engagement rates over 2014 averages. The injection of third-party segments comes more than a year after Twitter rolled out first-party data matching (retargeting and CRM data) under its Tailored Audiences program. Blog post. In other Twitter news, MoPub reports brand advertisers drove a lot more spend in 2014, surpassing performance marketers. Charts.

Fraud Fight Fumble

Linda Woolley is out as head of a new industry body tasked with cleaning up the digital ad ecosystem, just four months after the group was formed. The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), a joint effort of the ANA, IAB and 4As, will be led on an interim basis by Mike Zaneis, the IAB’s general counsel and head of public policy. Woolley’s exit was announced as TAG named a group of 20 highfalutin board members, including CMOs from Keurig, JCPenney and Mondelez. Press release. Related: AdExchanger’s coverage of TAG’s anti-fraud agenda.

Peeling The MRC Onion

The viewability debate has thrusted an ordinarily vanilla topic – measurement accreditation – into the industry spotlight. WSJ’s Mike Shields peeks behind the curtain at the Media Rating Council, the main body charged with putting a stamp of approval on measurement providers, and finds an organization struggling to make the best of a difficult situation. “They are accrediting so many companies so quickly, but they don’t have the power to dictate very deep in the technology, which is making standardization across these companies very challenging,” he said. “The frustration in the industry is palpable.” More. Related: MRC accredits GroupM and Unilever’s tougher viewability metric. Read that.

Predictive Products

Salesforce.com pumped Predictive Decisions into its Marketing Cloud, what SVP of product marketing Eric Stahl described to AdExchanger as a feature combining known and anonymous information about a user in order to trigger predictive recommendations across apps, email and sites. In tandem, it launched a tool called “Collect Beacons,” which streams data in real time, whether from web analytics or point of sale, and mashes it up with CRM data. “We’ve only recently begun leveraging ExactTarget’s capabilities from its acquisition of iGoDigital, so this is integrating their algorithms and data science into our marketing execution platform,” Stahl said. Press release.

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