the colors of our digital lives by piet hein van dam of wakoopa - presented at insight innovation...

In 2008 the World Federation of Advertisers published their famous Blueprint for consumer-centric holistic measurement (www.wfanet.org/blueprint). It outlines the vision, objectives and recommended actions towards the developments of a holistic measurement methodology – for truly understanding the multi-media behaviour of consumers while respecting their privacy. A century earlier, Alfred Adler published the basic principles of what later became the social-psychology theory of individual differences. This is a strong framework for understanding consumers at their ‘deepest’ level of fears, beliefs and values – providing insights into their fundamental motivations that drive (future) purchase decisions. Now what would happen when we combine both? Suppose we have the insights into consumers with the socio-psychological depth of Adler AND we have registered their total online media consumption? Wouldn’t that be the researchers’ ultimate dream? In this paper we´d like to present the results of an experiment where an emerging new technology (single source online metering) is combined with a well-known socio-psychographic segmentation method. This innovative project is a collaboration between two companies exploring the richness and application of behavioural data within market research. Respondents are invited to install a passive meter on all their online devices (pc’s, smart phones and tablets) combined with surveys on their demographic and socio-psychographic background variables. The passive metering technology was developed by Wakoopa, an Amsterdam based technology firm supplying market research agencies worldwide. The technology is an all-in-one solution for passively measuring the digital footprints of respondents across their devices (pc’s, smart phones and tablets) and across their activities (browsing, search, apps usage, ad- and preroll exposure). In a privacy conscious way. All streams are brought together in one analytical dashboard. The socio-psychographic analysis has been matured and commercialized by The SmartAgent Company, a Dutch market segmentation firm. It is known as the BSR model (Brand Strategy Research) and is applied across industries, both locally and internationally. The model contains two dimensions: a sociological axis indicating how a person relates to his social environment (from belonging to independent) and a psychological axis indicating how a person handles tensions (from extravert to introvert). The resulting four quadrants give four motivational clusters: Vitality, Harmony, Security and Manifestation. Each of these consumer quadrants having it’s unique needs, motivations and products or services and communication requirements. And for the sake of clarity and communication, each of those segments has it’s own colour code (blue, red, yellow and green). In this paper we present the results of this experiment. How does the online media consumption differ across the four motivational