Amongst the myriad of behavioural, contextual, lookalike and retargeting options available to online advertisers right now, the number of connected devices that we now use in a household, and the effectiveness of brands targeting these platforms, has perhaps been overlooked so far.

Until now, the overall effective reach of a multi-platform online campaign, taking in desktop, mobile, tablet, and now potentially connected TVs and game consoles, has been unknown – and considering a specific household now owns 4.6 connected devices on average, brands are looking for answers.

Step up Specific Media, one of the leading online advertising networks, which now has the ability to measure performance in this way.  Its new ‘Householding’ technology is a US development, conceived to  compare and combine online achievements with other traditional media, such as TV, using the common GRP (aka TVR) metric. Using this technology, Specific Media will allow advertisers to understand not just total clicks and view-through, but aggregated reach and frequency too.

The Householding platform simplifies the landscape by identifying access points and clustering devices together with a unique identifier on a household level, expanding behavioural targeting from individual users to entire households.   Interestingly, synced media can be bought across multiple devices and formats, reaching people in the same household with the same message to create a household buzz. This allows brands to communicate not just with the purchaser but other influencers in the household too.

Using multiple data sources and attributes, advertisers are able to refine targeting to a household of co-located individuals, and can also build a bespoke customer map targeting, say, households within a relevant radius of a store who have demonstrated active interest in products they stock.    Existing customer data can also be fed into the platform, with lookalike ‘neighbourhoods’ sought that have a perceived high propensity to purchase.

Reporting is of course key.  Much as you might look at TV advertising performance (i.e. weekly TVRs, weekly reach and OTS), so you can do the same with ‘Householding’, with a Digital GRP (rating point) extracted which gives rise to a coverage and frequency result for the household.