Meet Our Partners: Q&A with S&P Global Mobility

TruAudience^® solutions enable the marketing ecosystem to leverage data and identity with trust. In this series, we will introduce the partners who are critical to our success.

Can you give us an introduction to S&P Global Mobility and the Polk Automotive Solutions portfolio?

Our history goes back more than 100 years when Polk began tracking vehicle information for the entire industry. Our organization has grown organically over time and today is part of S&P Global — specifically S&P Global Mobility, a division dedicated to the automotive and mobility sector.

The Polk Automotive Solutions portfolio is designed for automotive marketers and built from a few core datasets. Polk Audiences are used for marketing activation, Polk Signals are used for measurement and insights, and Polk Data Services help amplify and augment our clients’ first-party data assets.

These solutions cover the complete consumer lifecycle: Consideration, purchase, ownership, servicing and trade-in/disposal.

Tell us about your role at S&P Global Mobility.

My team builds strategic partnerships with the world’s leading media platforms and agencies. We make it easier for automotive marketers and dealers to target their media with Polk Audiences across programmatic, social and TV (in all its forms). We also help them measure that media against metrics that will actually improve their bottom lines — like vehicle sales or reach against EV intenders — rather than proxy metrics like online conversions or reach against a demographic audience.

What sets the data fueling Polk Audiences apart from others?

We provide a robust combination of automotive data and insight to the industry. In the US alone, we have a complete view of vehicle ownership across 125 million households going back over 30 years, along with hundreds of data sources that allow us to see the complete picture of every consumer car-buying household. All S&P Global Mobility data used within our solutions is compliant with state and federal privacy laws.

For media buyers looking for Polk Audiences in the TruAudience^® Data Marketplace, what would they find?

We have more than 2,000 segments, allowing marketers to target every make and model across all marketing initiatives. We’ve also designed a new Taxonomy specifically for new electric vehicle (EV) audiences to help marketers reach the next generation of auto buyers, and support the predicted 12x growth in EV models by 2030.

How do you see connected TV (CTV) fitting into broader advertising plans? What is an advantage or critical benefit you see CTV bringing to advertisers and marketers?

The smart marketers are already using data-driven investment strategies in CTV channels to reduce waste and improve performance with better targeting. The ability to suppress certain segments and add others, and gauge performance on important metrics (like sales lift and buy through rates) are now possible in CTV environments.

What’s the most important audience or data characteristic media buyers should look for when targeting third-party audiences on CTV?

That their audiences have a propensity to be in-market during the course of the campaign. Not their demographic profile or some generic lifestyle — are they actually the people who will ultimately buy your product?

The media and advertising ecosystem has changed a lot in the last decade. What are some ways S&P Global Mobility has evolved to keep up?

One example is during the supply chain crisis in automotive — which led to a massive pivot in our portfolio offerings and product development — we developed new audiences for initiatives around Service, Lost Souls, Trade-Ins, and Future In-Market. Those all helped brands and dealers maintain relationships with their customers — even when they didn’t have new cars to sell.

What’s most interesting to you about solving problems in the automotive industry?

I mean, cars are just cool and they’re fun to talk about. But the dynamic between national, regional and local advertising in automotive is interesting, especially as it applies to TV advertising. Who’s best suited to deliver a Plug-In Hybrid or ½ ton pickup truck ad to this particular consumer? Is this household more than a year out from purchase and more likely to respond to a branding campaign? Or are they in-market and adding vehicles to their consideration set, and actively comparing deals and ready to buy now? 

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