Magnit Launches Aggregion Platform for Digital Marketing

Grocery Super Retail Chain Launches the First Decentralized Data Exchange Platform Aimed To Improve Marketing Accuracy

The platform provides the FMCG brands with a self-service audience designer to construct consumer segments based on transactional purchase data from Magnit, one of Europe's largest supermarket chains, boasting over 22,000 supermarkets and dozens of millions of regular customers enrolled in the loyalty program. This wealth of data — 4.5 billion purchases, available for the first time — may now be used to improve targeting in digital marketing and advertising.

Marketing specialists from leading media agencies using the platform are able to tailor segments from more than a hundred of behavioral attributes and several thousand product categories. Once defined, the segment is uploaded directly to the most popular advertising platforms (Mail.ru, Yandex, Facebook, Google, etc.) and may then be used to show targeted ads to the audience.

But what makes the platform truly unique is the decentralized architecture that allows to base segments not just on Magnit’s already massive database, but also on data offered by other vendors integrated into the network. The distributed protocol performs cross-matching between vendors’ data, allowing to significantly increase sample size and build more accurate customer profiles than similar but single-vendor solutions.

The network launches with two participating data vendors: Magnit and Atol, the leading offline and online payment provider (37% total market share and 70% in online transactions). As the number of partners and the amount of available data continues to grow, the targeting accuracy and audience reach will also increase.

Results of pilot campaigns conducted with leading FMCG brands show that conversion — the percentage of customers from selected segment that click on the ad — increases by up to 100% percent and the audience targeting accuracy is getting a five to tenfold boost depending on the product advertised.

The decentralized platform and network are developed by Magnit in partnership with Aggregion, the founder of the blockchain-based distributed licensing protocol, with additional technological support provided by Microsoft and its Azure product stack. Top media agencies and brands shared their industrial expertise to ensure that the solution meets the market needs.

The solution is built as a distributed data management platform (DDMP). Its consortium model and open network ensure that new data vendor partners are welcome to join on their own terms. The technology is fully transparent and its instance is implemented at each data vendors own IT landscape, to ensure that their highly sensitive data is secure, protected, and never transferred to third parties. The first phase of the platform development launches with retail data vendors, but in the near future different types of vendors are expected to join: telecom, financial institution, IoT, and other industries.

“This is the first stage of development for our digital marketing platform. In the future, we plan to enhance the system with tools for automatic segmentation and selection of audience depending on the goals of a given campaign, including during its implementation, as well as expand customer analytics capabilities and connect Magnit’s advertising media to the platform. —commented Artem Alekseev, Director of Department of Forecasting and Analytics of Magnit Retail Chain.

“This platform offers advertisers a new possibility to find real customers for their category and analyze and improve audience targeting accuracy for online sales and increase effectiveness for offline sales. An open and easy-to-understand self-service platform represents a new development in this area. We’re certain that this is just the start of the journey. Considering Magnit’s scope, development of this platform will provide the industry with many more useful results. —noted Marina Safronova, Head of Big Data Projects at OMD OM Group.

“We’ve created our platform to help players on the advertising market segment their audience more accurately. By analyzing data from Magnit and other members of the consortium, our initiative allows brands and advertising agencies to achieve better effectiveness when creating campaigns, thus increasing their competitive strength. The solution utilizes blockchain technology within a Microsoft Azure cloud, which ensures security and data integrity from a technological standpoint and allows creating a unique ecosystem of member companies while maintaining transparency of their actions,”—said Nukri Basharuli, Aggregion’s CEO.

According to the data from IAB, the digital advertising market in Russia grew by 22% as of the end of 2018, totaling over $3 billion USD and taking up close to 40% of the country’s overall advertising market.

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