A collaboration between Canada’s major rail network VIA and newspaper The Globe and Mail demonstrated a 300%-plus increase in reach for a targeted segment over a general travel audience. The collaboration was enabled by data clean room vendor Optable.
The statistics. Four data points were released to indicate the success in using the Optable platform:
- A segment based on insights into matched customers yielded a 3.4X greater reach than addressing a general travel audience.
- The cost per unique reach was 2.5X more efficient.
- The cost per viewable impression was 1.5X more efficient.
- The cost per qualified visit on VIA Rail’s website was competitive with long-established optimization tactics and engagement was better.
The strategy. In collaboration with The Globe and Mail, Optable established a data clean room in which insights from readers could be surfaced without compromising privacy. This enhances audience targeting and revenue growth for The Globe and Mail itself; the VIA collaboration shows how third-parties can benefit from customer matching without PII being shared between the newspaper and the railroad.
Why we care. Data clean rooms sound like a great proposition with brands being able to pool and match data about their customers without actually trading personal information. So far, because of expense and implementation challenges, they have seemed like an enterprise proposition — and VIA Rail is nothing if not an enterprise.
Success stories are only likely to broaden their appeal.
Dig deeper: Why we care about data clean rooms
About the author
Kim Davis is currently editor at large at MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for almost three decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Shortly thereafter he joined Third Door Media as Editorial Director at MarTech.
Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.
