Marin Software and BlueKai Team Up to Announce Audience Connect

For as long as we can remember, the keyword has been the fundamental anchor of the search marketing industry. Through the keyword, search marketers have historically “pulled” customers from the discovery to the consideration phase by trying to map a message (creative) to their search intent (query). Through this process, seasoned search marketers have created massive databases of “intent,” which have allowed them to fine-tune messages and investments based on the “intentions” most likely to drive the ideal ROI.

Intention based marketing through search keywords has been the quintessential strategy in any serious marketer’s toolkit for some time now. But with all it's benefits, it's clear to see that the keyword does have its flaws when used in isolation.

While keyword-based marketing tells us a wealth of information about potential intentions, it tells us nothing about the quality or lifetime value of the customer. Is the searcher a current customer or a potential customer? Are they likely to purchase low margin or high margin products? What types of products are they looking for when they come to your website from a branded term? And what is the potential ROI of the searcher one month, six months, two years from now? The search marketing industry has long been seeking a solution to answer these questions, and a way to run search campaigns targeting both intentions and audiences at the same time.

Today, Marin announced Audience Connect, the digital marketing industry’s first ever keyword and audience based marketing solution. Audience Connect is made possible through a partnership with BlueKai, the only independent SaaS solution for data management, analysis and activation in marketing. Through BlueKai, Audience Connect unites advertisers’ first- and third-party audience data with keyword intelligence. It pulls from over 40 thousand attributes of audience data across 400 million profiles, including intent data, demographics, and behavioral insights.

Advertisers can now target more effectively, customize creative and optimize bidding by specific audiences for search campaigns as well as display, video, analytics, native advertising and site optimization. Audience Connect also makes it possible for advertisers to build truly customer-centric programs across all digital marketing channels.

Over the coming months, Marin looks forward to continuing to help our customers reach their ROI objectives while offering them new capabilities through Audience Connect. These include:

1. Audience Analytics – Ability to combine the power of your users with audience insight, purchase intent and demographics to maximize ROI
2. Look-alike Modeling for Audience Expansion – Ability to expand audiences to find more high-value customers, based on keyword search and online browsing history.
3. Intent-Based Retargeting – Ability activate new performance-driven audiences across search, social and display channels in one interface
4. Audience-Centric Bidding on Search Terms - Customer-centric bid optimization to deliver high-value conversions by audience segment

For more information on Audience Connect and our BlueKai partnership, please check out our press release.