Cross-Device Targeting

What is cross-device targeting?

Cross device targeting is the practice of linking a user’s devices together so that advertisers know that they are targeting the same person through different devices.

As device switching becomes more and more common, advertisers are forced to be able to both match and target a user’s multiple devices in order to drive home a sale. Imagine a user who sees an ad for furniture on his computer and adds a couch to his cart, but does not check out. He leaves the house and does not have access to his computer for the rest of the day. As a marketer, I would be extremely interested in being able to match that user’s computer to his mobile device so that I would still be able to target him throughout the day. If I can do this, I will be able to show him a retargeting ad which brings him back to his cart. This can be the difference between failing to convert or making a sale.

A user can be matched to her laptop, tablet, mobile and desktop, and have all these devices linked to each other.

What are the benefits of cross-device targeting?

• Advertisers can utilize sequential targeting to first make a customer aware of a product or service and eventually drive a conversion. Because of the omni-channel state of the current ad industry, sequential ads are more easier to implement if advertisers can link together a user’s multiple devices.
• Advertisers can implement multiple touchpoints and A/B test for which one is the most effective for ad spend. Another form of this is to
• Advertisers can appeal to the same person in different ways in accordance to what device he is browsing from. For example, a user may be targeted with a standard display ad that takes them to a product page on desktop, but they may be driven to the app on a mobile device.

How are user devices matched to one another?

Deterministic Data

This is any purposeful action where the user declares information about themselves. Using deterministic data, we can be almost 100% sure that the user who has logged in to one device is the owner of another device. This is a lot more accurate than probabilistic data but scale is not as high.

• Login information. We can match a user’s desktop to his tablet and smartphone if he is logged into Facebook on all 3 devices. The same holds true for any other types of logins, such as emails, Youtube accounts, etc.
• Surveys and forms. Users can fill out forms and give marketers their information

Probabilistic Data

Using probabilistic data, we can infer from user behavior with a likely certainty that the owner of one device is the owner of another. This can be applied to a much broader range of devices that deterministic data but is not as accurate.

• Location (IP addresses)
• Device IDs
• Conversion type
• Date
• Landing page
• Interests and web browsing history

Putting it all together

Cross device companies feed all of these different data points into their algorithms to create their cross-device graphs. From these cross-device graphs, they can paint a pretty good picture of who the consumers are and what kind of ad stimulus that they would be most affected by.

Note that even deterministic data is anonymized. This means that although we won’t know the email of the person or the person’s name, we will know that we are targeting the exact same person on her desktop and her mobile if we were somehow able to match her two devices deterministically.

Sources

• https://www.mni.com/cross-device-targeting.html
• https://www.lotame.com/benefits-cross-device-marketing/
• https://goodwaygroup.com/blog/cross-device-targeting/
• https://www.tapad.com/uses/the-experts-guide-to-cross-device-conversion-attribution
• https://www.digilant.com/solutions/media-buying/

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