[Interview] Luke White, Audiense: Understanding Communities and Segments Who Make Up Audiences

Who are you and what are you doing at Demo Day?

Hi there! I’m Luke White, Head of Partnerships at Audiense. During my demo session, I will guide you through a very successful, and common, use case for Audiense clients which is to complement their Social Listening with Audience Intelligence.

Who should come to check you out?

Resuming in 2 main groups, anyone who feels included in any of these: Marketers and Consumer Researchers. That means we talk to many different people: marketing managers, social media and social listening professionals, researchers, brand strategist, creative directors, insights teams, comms, content teams, data analysts, media planners, agencies… At the end of the day, Audiense helps anyone who really wants to understand consumers, uncover communities and segments that made the target audiences and discover how to activate those audiences and segments by using the unique insights we can provide about them.

Why is now the time to be investing in social intelligence (and your solution!)?

Recently situations, as exceptional as this global pandemic that occurred in recent months, have highlighted the importance of social data at a time when consumers were more hyper connected than ever. But social data can’t work by itself to inform wider strategies. It requires some contextualization to be able to provide a complete picture of the consumers. This where social intelligence came to the play table, and beyond the relevance it has gained during this exceptional circumstances, will play a fundamental role in the near future of marketing and business.

What one word sums up your business?

Audiences.

What’s the best use case(s) for your technology?

Well, our unique social consumer segmentation provides a great data-foundation to Persona development, understanding the audiences that matter to your business or finding new audience pocket opportunities.

However, on the back of segmentation, it is the richness of the affinity & interest graph analysis that gives you the ability to tap into the ever-evolving culture & trends; so that, you can bring effective personalisation and build more relevance in:

1. Influencer and Sponsorship selection.
2. Content/creative development.
3. PR & Comms strategy.
4. Media planning in the cookie-less world (e.g. contextual advertising strategy).

In addition to this, here at Audiense, we are aware that our platform can provide the most value when used alongside other tools.

Complementing social listening is our strongest most popular use case. When using social listening platforms to tap into social data, you will often find these are too focused on content rather than people.  Therefore, using an Audience intelligence tool to compliment your social listening is crucial when looking to really understand your audience.

What makes your technology and/or approach unique? What’s your USP?

Audiense Insights segments audiences by the interconnections that exist among the people (“Who knows who”). Thanks to how those connections are created between consumers (“How they know each other”), we can infer their shared interests and affinities, providing you with actionable insights to help your business grow.

However, you get the most of Audiense when used alongside other tools, given the way it cuts  data and its insights are complementary, rather than overlapping; becoming the "bridge for intelligence" to stack sources of insights or execution. For instance, insight sources might include existing social listening (e.g. Pulsar), third-party audience survey platforms (e.g. Global Web Index) and 1st party data.

What's the best thing about working in social intelligence?

For me, one of the most exciting and important things about working in this field is that the book has not been written yet. Over the past few years, we have seen how digital consumer insights have evolved at unprecedented speed. We are enjoying a journey that we are creating ourselves, led by innovation and I have the feeling that there are no barriers that we cannot overcome.

Learn more about SI Tech Demo Day, and access all the presentations from this year’s event, on demand

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