FAQ Contents

• GENERAL QUESTIONS
  • What is the ActivationPlanner™?
  • Where do I find the ActivationPlanner™?
  • How much does the ActivationPlanner™ cost?
• HOW ACTIVATIONPLANNER™ WORKS
  • How are segment recommendations determined?
  • What are AffinityAnswers data sources?
• ACTIVATIONPLANNER™ USAGE
  • What are TrueAffinity™ and Likelihood to Engage (LtE)?
  • What’s the difference between an in-category segment and a top affinity segment?
  • I would like to customize the recommendation from the ActivationPlanner™; can I do that?
• PURCHASING AFFINITYANSWERS SEGMENTS
  • How do I buy the segments you recommended?
  • What is your pricing model?
  • Do you have segments available other than your recommendations?
  • Can you create a custom audience for me?
  • Is there a minimum spend associated with buying AffinityAnswers segments?
  • What media channels can I activate your audiences against?
• ISSUES
  • What if my brand does not show up in search box of the ActivationPlanner™?
  • What do I do if I need help building segment recommendations?
• PLANNING
  • These recommendations are useful from a planning standpoint; how can I see more?

GENERAL QUESTIONS

What is the ActivationPlanner™?

ActivationPlanner™ is an app created by AffinityAnswers that displays affinity-based audience segment recommendations.  It is specifically designed to make it easier for Brand Media Directors, Media Agency Planners, and Programmatic Buyers to discover and activate the digital advertising segments predicted to be most effective for programmatic branding by AffinityAnswers TrueAffinity™ algorithm.

Where do I find the ActivationPlanner™?

ActivationPlanner™ is available for free at https://activationplanner.affinityanswers.com.

How much does the ActivationPlanner™ cost?

Free, and publically available on the AffinityAnswers website.

HOW ACTIVATIONPLANNER™ WORKS

How are segment recommendations determined?

Traditional look-alike modeling uses static attributes such as demographics to extend audiences. The resulting audience, while frequently large, does not tend to perform well for any brand campaign metrics.  In contrast, the act-alike modeling performed by AffinityAnswers looks at observed consumer engagement behaviors to predict which audiences show affinity towards your brand and thus are likely to respond better than an average population.

Recommendations are made using our TrueAffinity™ algorithm.  TrueAffinity™ is a proprietary brand interaction metric created by AffinityAnswers that indicates the strength of active, mutual engagement between brands’ audiences over time. The higher the score, the more receptive that brand’s’ audience is to messaging and content from the other brand.

So, this is the brands that your customers like, whose audiences also have affinity for your brand.  To think of it in the simple terms of a middle-schooler, it is like finding out that someone you like has a crush on you as well.

Our TrueAffinity™ score is measured on an exponential scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest.  In general, any score above 7 is a very strong mutual affinity measurement, but keep in mind that a TrueAffinity™ of 8 is much higher than a 7 due to the exponential scoring.

What are AffinityAnswers data sources?

To measure TrueAffinity™ and make segment recommendations, we use the vast amounts of public social data across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as the world’s largest focus group.  Social engagement provides a way to capture both the conscious and unconscious influence a brand has on consumers.  By analyzing the active engagement and affinities of this 2 billion+ person audience, we can predict – at scale – how effective a brand’s marketing will be at engaging their target audience.

Our algorithm is built to cut through noise of social chatter and ingest data only from active user engagements, allowing us to understand true brand affinities.  With our algorithm, we can uncover relationships between brands that no one knew existed.

We track and catalog the relationships between 60,000 entities including brands, movies, shows, celebrities, teams, athletes, bands, musicians, and digital properties

ACTIVATIONPLANNER™ USAGE

What are the TrueAffinity™ and Likelihood to Engage (LtE) scores?

TrueAffinity™ is a proprietary brand interaction metric created by AffinityAnswers that indicates the strength of active, mutual engagement between brands’ audiences over time. The higher the score, the more receptive that brand’s’ audience is to messaging and content from the other brand.  TrueAffinity™ is measured on an exponential scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest.

Likelihood to Engage show how much more likely a member of the affinity segment shown will be to engage with your brand’s content as compared to an average consumer.  These predicted scores can be anything from 2-10 times more likely (low number of bars shown) to hundreds of times more likely (full bar count shown).

What’s the difference between an in-category segment and a top affinity segment?

The output of the ActivationPlanner™ displays affinities in two semicircles.  The inner circle displays top in-category segments for the searched brand – great for conquesting campaigns.  So, if you are a CPG brand, it will show other CPG brands. The outer circle shows high affinity brands, media, and celebrities – great for extending reach.

I would like to customize the recommendation from the ActivationPlanner™; can I do that?

Yes, customizations can be done after you Sign In.  If you do not like a specific recommendation from the ActivationPlanner™, you can get additional recommendations by clicking the swap icon shown on each affinity brand.   Or you can completely remove the recommendation by clicking on delete icon.  This functionality is also detailed in the product tour when you first visit the ActivationPlanner™.  And to start over, simply hit refresh on your browser.

Also, we can create custom recommendations and segments for our clients; simply email us at hello@affinityanswers.com.

PURCHASING AFFINITYANSWERS SEGMENTS

How do I buy the segments you recommended?

The recommendations shown are not simply theoretical – these are actual audience segments currently available for purchase via Oracle Data Cloud (BlueKai).  Finding your audience is as simple as typing “Affinity Answers” in your DSP’s audience search interface and then narrowing down to a specific brand from the segment list.  For more advanced use cases, such as customizing your target reach, contact us at hello@affinityanswers.com and we’ll help build your plan.

Note: our previous company name was Colligent, so we may still show up in some DSPs by that name.

What is your pricing model?

We use a CPM pricing model, so you are only ever charged for audiences as they are used.  The exact CPM for an audience can be obtained from your DSP.

Do you have segments available other than your recommendations?

Yes, even though we have over a thousand audience segments available on Oracle Data Cloud, this is just the beginning of the audience modeling that AffinityAnswers can do for a brand.  If you would like more recommendations, or to try some of our non-brand segments (like Black Friday or Christmas), or to have us build a bespoke segment for you, just send us a note at hello@affinityanswers.com.

Can you create a custom audience for me?

Yes, just send us a note at hello@affinityanswers.com.  We can create a bespoke audience around your brand, a competitor’s brand, or an event.

Is there a minimum spend associated with buying AffinityAnswers segments?

No.  Our DSP channel partners all charge on a CPM basis.

What media channels can I activate your audiences against?

The segment recommendations shown can be used for any type of programmatic advertising – display, mobile, video, etc.

AffinityAnswers‘ audience recommendations can also be used for non-programmatic media, such as television and social media buys or partnership / endorsement opportunities.  And if you have 1^st Party data, we can model affinities for that data too.

ISSUES

What if my brand does not show up in search box of the ActivationPlanner™?

Even though we track 60,000 brands, sometime a few fall below our radar.  If the brand you are interested in does not show up in our search bar, contact us at hello@affinityanswers.com and we will get it added.

What do I do if I need help building segment recommendations?

Contact us at hello@affinityanswers.com and a member of our Client Support team will be happy to help.

PLANNING

These recommendations are useful from a planning standpoint; how can I see more?

We have a more robust SaaS tool, the Affinity Activation Platform, which shows the full TrueAffinity™ relationships of all 60,000 brands we track for planning purposes.  We provide access to this platform for free to clients who buy an annual minimum commitment of impressions using our segments.  Contact us at hello@affinityanswers.com and our Business Development team can get you set up on the platform.