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The New Evolution in Segmentation

Getting to know every one of your customers may seem like an impossible task, but it’s well within reach. MediaComp has partnered with Claritas to allow you an insider’s view of your customers and prospects using PRIZM® NE.  PRIZM NE is the latest version of the original and most widely used target marketing system in the United States. This powerful tool provides a standard way of sorting the population into similar groups by demographics, lifestyle preferences and behaviors to provide actionable target marketing information.

Segmentation Gives You Insight

Segmentation provides a simple way to identify, understand and target customers so you can easily reach your most profitable customer segments. When you understand your customers and prospects, you can target them more efficiently. Segmentation gives a complete picture of their likes, dislikes, lifestyles and purchase behavior so you can tailor your message and products specifically to them.

PRIZM NE, the new evolution of Claritas segmentation, represents entirely new technology innovations, as well as demographic discoveries. PRIZM NE defines every household and neighborhood in the U.S. in terms of demographically and behaviorally distinct types or “segments.” Additionally, this integrated system allows you to target more precisely by linking to geography and virtually every major survey and marketing database in the U.S.

Maximize Your Marketing Efforts

PRIZM NE is unique in the field of geodemography because it capitalizes on more than three decades of segmentation experience and now spans the entire targeting hierarchy—from the individual household all the way up to five-digit ZIP Codes, and everything in between—all using the same segmentation schema. With PRIZM NE, you can:


  • Dig deeper into your audience—use PRIZM NE to find the most valuable customers in your customer database

  • Target your best prospects – look for similar PRIZM NE segments to find more of your best customers

  • Tailor creative to their lifestyles—PRIZM NE helps you understand your prospects’ lifestyles and media preferences so that you can version your marketing pieces to make your offer more attractive

  • Integrate your marketing strategy—PRIZM NE is the ‘lingua franca’ that can be used on compiled list files, managed specialty lists, email lists, radio and television spots

 
The Most Reliable Segmentation
PRIZM NE was created by a proprietary method developed by Claritas statisticians that creates the segments based on analysis of household behaviors, rather than just demographics. Statisticians start with a single (dependent) behavior they wish to predict (such as “Own a Mutual Fund”) with all households in a single segment. Independent predictor variables, such as income, age, or presence of children, are analyzed to find the variable—and the appropriate value of that variable—that divides the single segment into two that have the greatest difference for that behavior.  Additional splitting takes place until all effective splits have been made or the size of the segment created falls below a predetermined minimum.

Claritas modified the standard CART (categorical and regression trees) procedure to extend its functionality to simultaneously optimize across hundreds of distinct behaviors at once, allowing Claritas to take full advantage of the nearly 10,000 behaviors and hundreds of demographic predictor variables at the geographic and household level. The process was run hundreds of times, varying the sets of behaviors, the predictor variables and other parameters to ensure that the resulting segments represent behaviorally important groupings.

In addition to a unique statistical technique, Claritas employed an unprecedented number of data sources and data levels in the development of PRIZM NE. Geodemographic data, the mainstay of previous segmentation systems, included Census 2000 demographics and ZIP+4-level demographics summarized from compiled lists. 

For the first time, Claritas also used household-level demographics in the development process. A massive database was assembled that included more than 890,000 household records from sources as diverse as Claritas’ proprietary Market Audit® financial survey, R.L. Polk new car buyers, Mediamark Research Inc. and Simmons lifestyle surveys, Medstat’s PULSE survey of healthcare behaviors and Claritas client files. Each of these 890,000 records included rich behavioral data, including both penetration (“Has a mutual fund”) and volume (“Has $X in a mutual fund”). Further, a substantial subset of the file—about 350,000—even had self-reported demographics to serve as a benchmark for the other sources, including the compiled list data. 

To each household record, Claritas appended geographic identifiers at the census Block Group and ZIP+4 levels, compiled list demographics, compiled neighborhood-level characteristics from census block group data and summarized ZIP+4-level demos and Claritas custom measures. The resulting database was used to design and evaluate systems at the self-reported household, list-based household, ZIP+4 and block group levels.


About Claritas

San Diego-based Claritas Inc. is regarded as the leading provider of intelligent marketing information and target marketing services aimed at reducing the cost of customer acquisition and growing customer value. Claritas offers over 60 marketing databases, industry leading consumer segmentation systems, consulting services and software applications for site analysis, advertising sales and customer targeting. Since 1971, Claritas has been the pre-eminent source of accurate, up-to-date information about people, households and businesses within any geographic area in the United States. Claritas is a division of VNU, a world-leading information and media company that includes ACNielsen, Nielsen Media Research, Spectra Marketing Systems, and Scarborough Research, among others. To learn more about Claritas and VNU products and services visit their web sites at www.claritas.com.


About MediaComp

MediaComp is a media management company based in Houston, TX since 1973. 

In these last three decades, MediaComp has been buying TV, Radio, Cable, Direct Mail, Print and Outdoor across the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.  What sets MediaComp apart from the “cookie cutter” approach to placing advertising dollars is our proprietary software that utilizes Nielsen and Arbitron ratings and Claritas PRIZM Lifestyle Segmentation and our client’s consumer data.  The speed of our software allows us to evaluate and incorporate any market nuances while maintaining the integrity of our client’s profile.  MediaComp’s multi-demographic, socioeconomic and product consumption analysis of media audiences gives our client an average of 20% more “targeted consumers” per media dollar.  In other words, delivering the target that matters and eliminating people that don’t.


 


For more information about MediaComp and PRIZM NE, contact us at  713-621-1071