Fresh from the ANA conference, I noticed a wave of innovation aimed at enhancing data quality and leveraging advanced analytics. The energy around these data tools is reshaping marketing strategies, emphasizing the precision and scalability of audience engagement. But the core question remains: how will marketers turn these advancements into tangible growth?
In this episode of Culture By the Numbers, host Sunny Youn and I dive right in:
“In this day and age of identity and privacy, data accuracy and governance have never been more critical for marketers. What Arima has built is a comprehensive differentiator for identifying hard-to-find audiences, such as foreign language-speaking immigrants. This solves some of the most challenging problems faced by brands today.”
- Sunny Youn
Growth is the End Goal: Targeting New Audiences with Precision
At its core, the purpose of data-driven marketing is to fuel brand growth. For established brands, growth requires reaching untapped audiences. A significant opportunity lies in identifying and connecting with new population segments. In Canada, for example, a surge in immigration—between 400,000 to one million new arrivals each year—introduces a growing audience of families seeking essential services, from banking to telecommunications. Brands looking to expand their market share are increasingly targeting these audiences to establish early, loyal relationships.
Real-World Application: Leveraging the Synthetic Society to Define Target Audiences
Using the Synthetic Society by Arima as a source, brands can build detailed audience profiles, down to attributes like language and geographic location. For instance, in Canada, Arima identified an audience of nearly one million South Asian Canadians—a sizable group with specific needs and brand affinities. Such data offers insights into financial behaviors, such as a preference for ICICI Bank, highlighting potential opportunities for both established and emerging brands to tailor their offerings and strengthen their market presence.
Behavior Discovery shows that New Citizens are most likely to bank with ICICI Bank, which has a global presence.
Location Intelligence reveals a high concentration of new citizens in areas near banks.
With the Synthetic Society, marketers can understand how to tailor messaging and services to align with distinct cultural and consumer needs. This approach allows companies to serve highly specific demographic segments, such as new citizens in Canada who might prefer communications in Hindi or Punjabi, and who exhibit unique financial behaviors. Armed with these insights, marketers can choose channels and messaging most likely to resonate with this group, from targeted digital video to in-language content.
Marketing Mix Modeling: Media Planning Across Channels
Using these detailed insights, marketing mix modeling takes it a step further by optimizing media placement across multiple channels. By integrating geographic and behavioral data, MMM allows marketers to strategically position ads across digital, analog, and out-of-home (OOH) channels. Arima’s approach, using the Synthetic Society, enables brands to pinpoint exactly where target audiences are located and to plan media buys that align with these geographies right down to the neighborhood level, if desired. Through geo-targeting, marketers can avoid spending on regions that don’t house target demographics, thus maximizing ad spend efficiency.
For example, Arima’s platform enables media planners to understand how high-index locations for South Asian Canadians in Toronto differ from those in Vancouver. Moreover, even within the South Asian community, there are nuanced differences—such as language (e.g., Hindi vs. Punjabi) or country of origin (e.g., Sri Lanka vs. India vs. Bangladesh)—that can influence media consumption patterns. Recognizing these distinctions allows marketers to tailor messaging even more precisely, ensuring cultural relevance and engagement.
This community's media usage also differs notably from the general population. For instance, while the national population spends approximately 8 hours per week on music streaming, South Asian Canadians tend to spend closer to 13 hours. Similarly, they engage with social media for about 24.5 hours weekly, compared to 17 hours for the broader population. This insight enables marketers to optimize campaign strategies across multiple media channels, from digital ads and radio to OOH placements, thereby maximizing reach without diluting message relevance.
Arima’s Cross-Media Planner highlights New Citizen’s media usage compared to the national population across past, present, and projected trends.
Using the Synthetic Society to Build Reach Curves and Optimize Frequency
One of the benefits of the Synthetic Society lies in its ability to create reach curves, which help marketers understand how to maximize exposure to target audiences. With synthetic personas and populations, Arima can simulate a campaign’s reach across different media channels and predict the optimal spend needed to achieve around 90% reach within a target segment. This granular data informs decisions on how to allocate media budgets across various channels to ensure a consistent and compelling brand presence.
For brands targeting multicultural audiences, this reach curve approach supports a cross-channel strategy that incorporates both digital and traditional platforms, creating a holistic media plan designed to capture attention and drive engagement.
Why the Synthetic Society?
The Synthetic Society by Arima offers several advantages for marketers looking to navigate data privacy concerns while retaining robust insights. Arima’s platform doesn’t rely on cookies or hashed email addresses. Instead, it builds a synthetic population from reputable first party data sources, mirroring real demographics, creating a model that offers both privacy and accuracy. With this anonymized, yet detailed, data model, brands can delve into media habits, cross category shopping and purchase behavior and preferences across geographic regions. The Synthetic Society also allows for seamless integration of online and offline behaviors, such as foot traffic to retail locations, thus supporting comprehensive media planning.
Validating the Model: Why Accuracy and Outcomes Matter
By anchoring synthetic data models to real population metrics, like census data, Arima ensures the model’s precision, helping marketers anticipate growth outcomes with confidence.
Exploring Arima’s Capabilities
For a closer look at Arima's tools and resources, book a free demo.
Data-driven marketing is only just beginning to reveal its potential, with data tools like Synthetic Society and MMM paving the way for brands to engage diverse audiences with precision and relevance. For brands seeking growth in an ever-evolving landscape, these insights and technologies are essential to understanding and capturing new audiences.
About Culture By the Numbers:
Culture By the Numbers is where data geeks meet pop culture—with a surprising twist! Join sharp-witted hosts Sunny and Jeff as they unpack the weird and wonderful ways analytics shape our world. Ever wonder why ads feel psychic or what makes a TV show go viral? They’ve got answers, laughs, and insights on how data drives trends across fashion, sports, politics, and more. Whether you’re looking to boost your marketing savvy, learn nerdy tricks, or just understand the data behind your favorite memes, tune in to see culture through a fresh lens, one data point at a time.
Sunny, the “madtech” maven, decodes the tech behind everyday culture, while Jeff, a branding expert for top global brands, adds humor and deep insights on human quirks and potential. Get ready to laugh, learn, and rethink culture through the numbers.