Campaign: Sky Adds Search Behaviour Targeting Feature to AdSmart Platform

Sky is adding a new feature to its AdSmart platform, which will allow brands to target millions of UK homes based on their online search behaviours.

AdSmart, which delivers ads into Sky, Virgin Media and Now households, ensures that personalised content is shown based on location or other personal data.

The latest feature, developed in collaboration with search intelligence platform Captify, will help marketers engage audiences based on data about their specific search behaviours (categorised by frequency and intent), matching it with Sky’s first-party data.

This will help advertisers engage in-market audiences that are actively searching for particular products and services, targeting them at every stage of their purchase journey.

Seven search behaviour categories will be available with the feature’s launch: home and garden, travel, news, job and education, arts and entertainment, games and pets and animals.

To optimise campaigns, AdSmart users can also combine audiences’ search behaviour habits with any of the platform’s additional 1,000 plus attributes – including postcodes, life stage or mosaic group classification. Advertisers can also combine any of these attributes with their own first-party data.

Sky said it has created the new feature due to wider industry demand to bring digital and TV campaigns closer together.

Ruth Cartwright, investment director at Sky Media, said: “Being able to embrace the best capabilities of digital, but in the brand safe, big-screen world of TV, makes campaigns more relevant and impactful. That’s what we’re hearing from brands and agencies, so that’s where we’re focusing our innovations.”

Sky is among a band of UK broadcasters engaging audiences through smart targeting capabilities. Recently, Channel 4 and Boots announced a partnership to pair data from the retailer’s Advantage Card users with those who tune into its streaming services. The brand also made a similar proposition with ITV.