Customer-driven from the inside out

emedia/vitals reporting:
Media companies seeking to become more "customer driven" are adopting practices commonly used by consumer marketers, such as loyalty marketing or behavioral targeting. As publishers invest in these efforts, many are running into a barrier that most marketers can relate to: an unclear or incomplete view of who their customers actually are.
...UBM TechWeb, publisher of technology brands such as InformationWeek, BYTE, Dr Dobb's and BlackHat, has addressed this challenge from the inside out, building a consolidated customer database that serves as the core of the company's multi-channel marketing approach, which it has dubbed "Curvonomics."
Curvonomics is TechWeb's way of measuring the value of its audience of IT professionals based on the content they consume. As a visitor digs more deeply into TechWeb content - viewing a page, downloading a white paper, attending a webinar or a live event - his or her value increases. The more TechWeb learns about each visitor's engagement and activities, the better they can serve them, in order to increase their value further.
The "curve" represents a customer's economic progression from low-CPM display advertising to high-end paid conferences, said Scott Vaughan, UBM TechWeb's chief marketing officer. "A visitor can come in at any point on the curve, and we assign a value to each of those engagements," he said. "The goal is to logically move the buyer up or down the curve, with a focus on ARPU [average revenue per user}. And the data tells us where to take them." 
24 databases into 1
Ah, the data. That brings us back to the consolidated database. Five years ago, UBM TechWeb had 24 databases storing various types of audience information across multiple brands. Now, it has one primary customer database.
It's not quite a 360-degree view of the customer - but it's getting there. UBM TechWeb has increased ARPU by 5 percent, and the number of active registered users (defined as users who have engaged over the last 12 months) has grown by 19 percent. Audience revenue now accounts for 45 percent of the company's total revenues, with marketing services (including advertising) accounting for the rest. 
4 areas of focus