CHICAGO -- Information Resources Inc. (IRI), a leading provider of solutions and services for consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail and over-the-counter healthcare companies, has joined forces with BlueKai, a leading complete enterprise data activation platform. The collaboration has resulted in a new direct-to-consumer digital platform to provide CPG manufacturers, agencies and media planners/buyers with the ability to use purchase-based, third-party data for targeting at scale.
The ability to identify and target prospects and customers is becoming a cross-channel endeavor for many CPG marketers. Digital marketing is an increasingly important part of the advertising mix, especially with today's savvy shoppers and their extensive product knowledge. Given the increased spending on digital marketing, it is even more critical to understand how these efforts drive results in both online and offline worlds. Marketers are under constant pressure to achieve better results and increase their return on advertising through more precise targeting to focus valuable media dollars on those consumer segments most likely to yield exceptional marketing returns.
To address this challenge, IRI and BlueKai have collaborated to deliver a digital direct-to-consumer activation platform that combines BlueKai's data platform with IRI's segmentation and predictive modeling solution, ProScore Targeting. This platform will focus on shopper segments most valuable to CPG manufacturers, launch direct-to-client, return-on-investment (ROI) studies and facilitate the development of new measurement products.
"BlueKai can provide scale and efficiency through their technology expertise and existing publisher, agency and client relationships," said Andrew Appel, president and CEO of IRI, Chicago. "Our strategic partnership enables us to take our targeting solutions and push them into a turnkey data activation system for Fortune 500 CPG manufacturers across thousands of categories, subcategories and brands."
The partnership will also enable the consolidation of different data sources, such as interest, shopping and ecommerce transactions under one technology umbrella to achieve even greater scale for audience buying within one tracking and activation platform.
"We're thrilled to work with IRI to combine our expertise in data management with their expert intelligence on CPG shoppers," said Omar Tawakol, CEO of BlueKai. "This collaboration enables marketers to tap into quality CPG targeting data and seamlessly activate it to any media channel via BlueKai's pre-connected platform."
Cupertino, Calif.-based BlueKai is an enterprise data activation solution for intelligent marketing. BlueKai offers its customers a system for managing and activating all their first-, second- and third-party data in all marketing and customer engagements. BlueKai is an end-to-end SaaS solution for marketers and publishers looking to maximize their cross-channel marketing efforts and create a proprietary solution for unlocking reach, scale and efficiency using data.
SymphonyIRI Group Inc. announced Tuesday during the opening day of the company's 2013 Summit conference that it is embracing its founding name of Information Resources Inc. and rebranding as IRI.
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