Brands that advertise online and on social media are constantly looking for new ways to target customers based on factors like interests and demographic data. But there’s more to social media users than just their age, location, and listed interests. Now, ad-targeting startup Sensegon is giving businesses the option to target users based on their actual personality traits.
Sensegon’s personality targeting tool, SenSplit, is a cloud-based intelligence engine that profiles a user’s personality by taking into account their actual interaction and use of social media, rather than just their pre-determined profile information.
For example, a company might want to target mothers who are interested in home décor items, but some of these users might be apt to make practical buying decisions, while others might be more likely to buy products based on an initial emotional connection or reaction. Social media campaigns to target these two different groups of women, who on the surface seem very similar, could be completely different based on their personality traits.
Sensegon is an Israeli-based startup that was originally founded in 2010. The idea behind SenSplit came when the company’s two founders, Omer Efrat and Tal Yaari, visited a car dealership together and noticed the salesman’s completely different tactics when addressing the two of them. When speaking to Tal, the conversation was geared toward elements like gas consumption and safety. But when talking to Omer, the salesman focused more on things like engine power and acceleration. The two decided that this same tactic could be used when addressing consumers in an online environment.
Companies looking to use the service can select their monthly budget, target segmentation size, and then work on identifying traits and behavior patterns of their target audience. The idea behind this type of tool is that it could allow businesses to create clusters of different kinds of social media users within their overall audience so they can develop more relevant campaigns to reach these different users.