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With customers browsing across devices, the challenge of consistently marketing to them whatever device they are using is one of the biggest to currently face the industry. Consumers want a seamless transition between devices but with current technology focused on recognising devices rather than the people using them (unless they log-in to a site) it’s been hard to join up. A new report from Adobe published this week shows that 79% of people – and 90% of millennials – switch devices when engaged in an activity with two thirds finding it frustrating that content is not synchronised across such devices.
The news that Adobe has unveiled its Adobe Marketing Cloud Device Co-op this week therefore is big news. The new network will enable some of the world’s biggest brands to work together to better identify consumers across their digital touch points enabling marketing to people across devices rather than just the physical hardware they are using.
Instead of relying on the IP addresses and internet cookies of devices the new systems will enable Co-op members to give Adobe access to cryptographically hashed login IDs and HTTP header data, which fully hides a consumer’s identity. Adobe processes this data to create groups of devices (“device clusters”) used by an unknown person or household.
Adobe will then surface these groups of devices through its digital marketing solutions, so Co-op members can measure, segment, target and advertise directly to individuals across all of their devices. Currently only brands such as Google and Facebook who have huge numbers of their users logged in regularly have been able to track cross-device behaviour.
Although it’s early days Adobe suggests that the Co-op could link up to 12 billion devices seen by Co-op members worldwide and enable those brands that use the service to recognise their consumers to deliver more personalised experiences across both devices and apps.
“The Adobe Marketing Cloud Device Co-op will enable brands to intelligently engage with their customers across all the different devices they are using,” said Brad Rencher, executive vice president and general manager, digital marketing at Adobe. “By harnessing the power of the Co-op network, members can benefit from a truly open ecosystem and a massive pool of devices enabling them to turn yesterday’s device-based marketing into people-based marketing,” he said.
