Staging the EXPO 2020 was always going to be a mammoth task, and, while the pandemic forced a one-year delay for its opening, millions still passed through its gates from October 2021. MEmob+, which has billions of profiles built on device IDs in its SMART data management platform, has matched at least 8 million visitors and has analysed this audience to create distinct profiles.

The project also focused on providing predictive intelligence about prospective audience behaviours to help brands to maximise their return on investment and gain market share.

SCALE
Using geo-fence data for the October 2021-January 2022 period, MEmob+ matched just over 8 million EXPO 2020 visitors with its profile database, 72% of them UAE residents and 28% international travellers. With this analysis came a deep understanding of their behaviours, affinities and interests, in their home country and abroad.

GLOBAL REACH

Over 2 million hardened travellers, who came to the UAE despite the pandemic and the restrictions imposed to contain it, not only toured the Expo but also visited Dubai and the other Emirates. Coming from over 30 countries, led by India, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, we have precise details about their affinities, behaviours and preferred venues/activities/locations (Points of Interest).

PERSONAS
These insights have led to the creation of distinct personas that brands have activated to achieve deterministic targeting. Among the 16 segments, Foodies, Shopaholics, Parents, Travellers, and Professionals were the most often detected. These personas were built on location, demographic, psychographic and technographic data picked up both in the home country and while in the UAE.

ACTIVATION

Using the insights of audience modelling technology, we identified the best personas among residents and international travellers for one Dubai retailer. As well as having visited the EXPO 2020, they displayed the behaviours, preferences and affinities that made them suitable prospects according to the live and historic data in our data management platform. These affluent shoppers live in upmarket districts, are frequently detected in high-end stores, regularly check investment apps on their phones and stay on top of fashion trends.

Thanks to more than 40 data sources and predictive modelling, we were able to determine the right time, location and channel to reach them with the retailer ads, using live sites, apps and social media across the omnichannel. Operating in a permission-based and privacy-compliant way using a range of online identifiers, we delivered a strong unduplicated reach and footfall attribution. Matching advertising exposure with footfall data from geofences helped quantify the campaign’s impact on store visitation and the performance of each channel on each segment. The study showed a 15% lift in store footfall.

These audiences will also resonate with communications from other destinations, considering their international outlook and travel propensity, even with Covid around, but also F&B, retail, entertainment, investments… Crucially, they can be targeted while they are in the UAE, back home or traveling, using our data and location-driven marketing solutions.

For more details on our EXPO 2020 audience segments and how to activate them across markets, contact us at [email protected]