As awareness of the importance of end-user privacy increases, and legislative frameworks to support it are increasingly adopted, marketers look in new directions to understand their customers. Contextual insights grow in importance as direct signals are reduced, in the same way as reduction in acuity of one of the human senses makes the others more important. For example, a visually-impaired person depends more heavily on their hearing to understand what is going on around them.
In the digital domain, the connected device used to access content is a key source of contextual signals. All digital content is consumed on a connected device of some kind, and critically the nature and capabilities of the connected device are not deemed privacy-infringing in any jurisdiction. Hence knowledge of the device used is a resource available to the digital marketer to deepen their understanding of the consumer.
How does device intelligence help marketers?
So what aspects of a connected device help the marketer to understand the consumer?
We typically break this into three areas.
1. Device model release date
Knowing when the device model was first released provides a couple of potential insights. Firstly, usage of a recently-released model may indicate that the user is an early adopter in nature, or possibly has higher disposable income. Usage of an older model may suggest the opposite: the user could be in the laggard category or have lower disposable income.
The below graph illustrates the profiles for two different companies; company B shows a broader spread with a third of visitors using device models from 2023 onwards, while for company A, half of all visitors are using devices from 2023 onwards.
2. The device brand or vendor
A major brand sends a different signal about the consumer than an emerging market or minor brand. It may indicate brand sensitivity or may indicate disposable income. When tracked over time, for the case of logged-in and hence known consumers, brand loyalty can be measured.
The below graph compares the brands used by visitors to the two companies: an obvious change is the switch between Samsung and Apple as the top brand, with the addition of Motorola suggesting a geographic location. For both, there is a solid presence of Chinese brands, but not the identical set, again highlighting the geographical separation between the companies. .
3. Device classification
Thirdly, what is the classification of the device? DeviceAtlas provides a segmentation or classification across a spectrum of five categories: entry level, low tier, mid tier, high tier, and premium. These correspond to classifications commonly used in the cellular industry, but have relevance outside it. For the case of the DeviceAtlas classifications, they are based on the hardware characteristics of the device, covering areas such as screen capabilities, connectivity supported, device RAM, number of CPU cores, clock speed and others.
The below graph has a similar pattern between the companies, but the notable difference is that company B has twice as many premium device users.
Combining the information across a household deepens the picture available: a household graph where there can be multiple smartphones, TVs and tablets in use provides reinforcement of the pattern.
Conclusion
Datapoints such as device model release date, brand and classification are not necessarily definitive on their own, but in combination with other signals available to the marketer they help to form an overall understanding of the consumer. When available across a large base of users, patterns and insights emerge which can be expected to be statistically significant. Therefore, by paying attention to these simple device insights, marketers can infer a significant amount of information about their customers without needing any personal data.
To see the breakdown of these factors for your own website is simple: DeviceAtlas Discover is a free service which gives an immediate view of your traffic, through a simple tag addition to your website. Try it out here.