Getting to Know Buyers’ Life Habits Helps Firms Direct Pitches

CARRIE GHOSE
Staff Reporter, Columbus Business First

​Marketers can discover a lot about consumers based on their browsing habits. A lot.Columbus startup Clarivoy builds online profiles of individual website visitors that even link their offline behavior, like probable income and favorite TV shows. It can tell an auto dealer the most likely TV ad a car buyer saw before first searching the dealer’s name.

Later this spring, it rolls out a product that detects the smartphone of a past car buyer visiting a dealer’s lot, and a week later sends that person an ad.

​“For 90 percent of the population, if we have their address, email or phone number, we can find them online and send ads to them,” CEO Steve White said.

“You’re browsing CNN and you see an ad for (client) Germain (Motor Co.),” he said. “They know you’re coming off lease.”

​Clients pay only if people click on the ads it sends.

“It puts the burden on us,” Chief Technology Officer Matt Grover said. “We’re self-incentivized to be experts at targeting.”

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