Amedia’s subscription success is based on good quality journalism. This means understanding what the audience and reader want and need.

Using data to understand how to convert them to subscribers also lays the groundwork for using subscription data for the advertising business. Logged-in users give publishers state-of-the-art audience segments and advertising products. What’s good for journalism can be great for business; not only for publishers, but also for advertising clients.

Amedia is Norway’s biggest publisher of editorial media, owning 100+ local, regional, and national newspapers. The publishing group is self-owned and is driven to ensure strong editor-controlled media throughout Norway.

Since 2015, Amedia has worked relentlessly with a digital-first approach. As a result, we now have data on 50% of the Norwegian population over the age of 18 and 81% of our pageviews are from logged-in users. We use mobile phone numbers as logins for digital subscribers; mobile phone numbers are unique to each person in Norway and it allows us to match and identify them against public records, albeit anonymously.

We have approximately 120 demographic/interest-based variables per logged-in user. These variables include gender, age/life phase, where they live, what type of housing they live in, interest in sports, economy, etc. It even tells us if they have a cabin by the sea or mountain.

With this data, we create audience segments for advertisers and media buyers. This means we know who we are targeting since our data is based on real people — the logged-in users.

CRM matching

Of course, gaining control over your first-party data is not only vital for publishers but is also an important strategy for many advertising clients.

Advertisers with their own GDPR-compliant first-party data can match their data with Amedia’s first-party data through an automated, encrypted process based on mobile phone numbers. This is called CRM matching. With CRM matching, we create tailored segments for the client. The matching process will give advertisers audience segments with virtually 100% accuracy.

By doing this, advertisers can reach their own audience and the customers they have data on outside their own channels — like a newspaper. This means high-precision advertising targeting for clients in high-quality editorial (controlled) context.

If your client is a grocery chain with a loyalty programme, it will have data on which of the customers buy certain products and which don’t. If the client wants to boost sales on certain products or categories, they have the data. And by doing a CRM match with first-party publishing data, the client can reach their customers and audience outside their channels. Vice versa, advertisers can exclude certain audience segments if they want to attract new customers.

CRM match in action

The Norwegian grocery chain Meny (with its affiliated loyalty programme, Trumf) wanted to use CRM match on a campaign for Asian food.

The business wanted to target customers buying Asian food and developed banner creatives relevant to that specific audience segment. Furthermore, purchase history data from the loyalty program Trumf was matched with Amedia’s logged-in users. The digital advertising was then targeted precisely towards the audience segment.

Through the precisely matched data from Trumf and Amedia, Meny could see how many of those exposed to the creatives had bought the products in-store. The results surpassed all expectations! The set goal for the campaign was a sales increase of 15% in turnover in this product category. Using CRM match, we saw an increase of 50% from the exposed audience segment.

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