Designed to provide measurement around COVID-19, Semcasting has developed a Digital Activity Score — an index to rank online consumers with degrees of engagement — to help advertisers get the most from their investments in media buying. The score is provided to clients for free.

The score, which indexes from 300 to 0, identifies the active online user by their Internet engagement, repetition and time spent on a site to identify who can be reached with online advertising using programmatic display, video, and connected TV activity across 281 million users.

It turns out users at the top of the index are 100-times more active than those at the bottom. Non-Internet users are put in a separate category that can quickly be excluded in any campaign.

“About 38% of advertisers have paused their campaigns during the crisis, but only a small percentage have canceled,” said Semcasting CEO and founder Ray Kingman. Kingman said the idea came to him during a sleepless night. 

Brands often want to know the best way to reach consumers. Content and activity always come into play.

DSPs typically allow during the campaign management process to provide over time the frequency, but it takes most of the campaign to realize the information. Semcasting, with the DAS, speeds the process. 

Kingman calls DAS a planning tool to determine the best way to reach consumers, whether through connected television, IP radio, display or other types of media like pre-roll or on mailing lists for those who are not online.

The signals measure the frequency with which the user is identified by state via mobile, laptop or connected TV.

Most of Semcasting’s clients are in the areas of pharmaceutical, healthcare, insurance, and education.

One educational advertiser wanted to run, but did not want any COVID-19 content on the page. “I think advertisers will rush back in suddenly at the first glimmer of turning the corner,” he said.

The DAS scores identified the most and least digitally active states. Washington, DC has 45.8% of its population with the highest DAS score, so marketers can easily use digital advertising to reach this audience with a specific type of media.

West Virginia, for example, has 53.7% of its population categorized as inactive, so marketers wanting to reach West Virginians would be better suited with a direct mail campaign rather than a digital one.