Enriching Audience Insights with Validated Interests
Modelling user behaviours from Gener8’s passive datasets enables a validated understanding of people’s interests
At Gener8, we leverage our passive, interconnected data feeds to infer user interests in topics like Video Gaming based on recent user activity. In this article we focus on how this dramatically enhances audience research capabilities.
What are the benefits of inferring user interests?
Passive data user interest modelling enables a validated, live view of user interests and purchase behaviours, which aren’t impacted by the spectre of survey fraud or infrequent and out-of-date survey waves. Each inferred interest provides an additional perspective for understanding the user, enabling cross-analysis across multiple dimensions.
For instance, users who have made purchases from the PlayStation Store or Xbox (Microsoft) Network in the last 6 months show a strong inferred interest in video gaming, with index scores of i243 and i210, respectively. This aligns closely with declared survey data, where 76% of PlayStation Store shoppers reported engaging with video games at least on a weekly basis, indexing at i152 compared to the overall population.
And while it's easy to assume that those purchasing from the PlayStation Store have an interest in video gaming, the real value lies in discovering that PlayStation owners and players also show a strong interest in Following Football (i145), Following Formula 1 (i139), and Watching TV (i129), perhaps as men tend to index highly as PlayStation owners at i127.
What's more, we can then dive deeper and analyse how buyers of FC25 (a football game formally known as FIFA) compare against the average PlayStation player.
Those who purchased FC25 or any of its point packs were significantly more likely (+111 vs. PlayStation overall) to show an interest in Following Football, which is unsurprising given the game's specialised nature. Notably, they also showed a greater interest in Gym & Exercising (+24) and Style & Fashion (+33) — all of which are valuable audience insights for shaping media activation campaigns, partnerships, and collaborations.
By implementing the inferred user scoring process across our userbase, we are also able to:
- Keep up with evolving interests. People’s preferences are always evolving, and a survey ‘moment in time’ snapshot of interests can quickly become out of date. Our passive data modelling rules run on a daily basis, enabling us to find and focus analysis on users with a strong active interest.
- Identify the right respondents to survey, fast. By categorising users by their passive behaviours we are able to find the right user cohorts quickly, even if they haven’t provided a survey answer to a question on that interest/ behaviour in the past.
- Validate survey respondent answers. Combining passive data scoring alongside declared survey responses, we can identify the delta between what people say they do vs. what they actually do.
How do we infer interests through passive data modelling?
At Gener8 we sit on a vast array of data feeds, including:
- Consumer Browsing, which enables us to understand the search terms made and the websites visited by the user
- Purchase Intelligence, which allows us to understand which brands and items the user has purchased for hundreds of merchants
- App Usage, which helps us to see the apps that were used by the user
By analysing each data feed with a pre-built intent trigger model for an interest like Video Gaming, we can start to identify the users who have an interest in this topic. See how we achieve this in detail in our previous article.
When developing passive data modelling-based classification for our users we combine the search intent signals with those of web browsing activity, purchases and app usage. What's more we score the user activity for each data source based on behaviour frequency and depth (e.g. action and/ or purchase intent search terms) to extend our confidence.
How can I access this data?
We utilised Gener8's Psychographics alongside Gener8 Snapshot survey responses and the Purchase Intelligence dataset to uncover insights from those with an interest in Video Gaming.
Gener8 Labs’ complete data and insights solution empowers media and marketing businesses to find actionable consumer and market insights, using our unique, consented, first party panel data sets that are all connected around one user ID.
Discover how you can power your decisions and gain a competitive edge from our behavioural truth set by contacting us today!
