A consensus from the participants is that businesses will increasingly consider big data as a new type of corporate assets, representing a key basis for gaining competitive advantage. For many industries, however, these are still early days for big data. While it is exciting to see companies now leverage tools and infrastructure to collect data and analyze data across business units, even from their partners and customers, most companies are still far from tapping the potential of big data for decision making, creating customer value, and driving innovation.

1. The Science of Messaging
1
Dr Yan Qu
VP Data Science, ShareThis
February 12, 2015

2. Outline
• ShareThis business
• Data science initiatives at ShareThis
• Case study on science of messaging

3. 3
120 SOCIAL CHANNELS
95% OF ONLINE AUDIENCE
ShareThis Sharing Solutions
ShareThis is the largest sharing platform
reaching 211 million people over 120 social
channels on 2.8 MM sites. That’s 95% of the web!
2.8MM PUBLISHERS

4. YOUR AD
We power sharing on 2.8 MM websites and see over 1.4B social interactions per month like this:
AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION DELIVERY
HOW SHARETHIS WORKS
4
Jessica reads an article
about budget bedroom
ideas & decides to share it
to her Facebook page
using the ShareThis widget!
This is Jessica!
She’s busy chatting and
browsing the web…
ShareThis observes the share
and can then target Jessica
and her friends with
advertising messages tailored
to their interests
All social actions are then cataloged and segmented to build out
custom audience profiles based on social sharing behaviors.
YOU
R AD

5. ShareThis Enhanced Data Capabilities
5
ShareThis Social Data
Social
Actions
(Click,
Share,
Search)
Social Channel
Breakdown
Geograp
hy
Offline Data
Offline
Purchase
Data
Household
Income
Demographic
Information
Comprehensive Insights
Utilizing the ShareThis network of over 2.8 million sites, each page annotated with
keywords, categories and sentiments, advertisers can leverage ST proprietary
social & 3rd party demographic data to better understand consumers social
behaviors (share, click, search) and insights into their offline habits and
demographic profile (age, HHI, gender)

6. Social insights

7. Social insights

8. Social insights

9. ShareThis knowledge center

10. 13%
MOBILE
10
USER ONLINE LIFE IS FRAGMENTED
ACROSS DEVICES
Relative Time Spent On Various Devices
Source: Google Study 2013

11. 11
A MULTI-DEVICE SOLUTION
PERPETUATES FRAGMENTATION
SEGMENTING AUDIENCES
BY DEVICE
DELIVERING DISJOINTED
MESSAGES
NOT LEVERAGING
OPTIMIZATION OPTIONS
VIA DEVICE OR VERTICAL

12. 12
SHARETHIS’ TRUE CROSS DEVICE TARGETING
Provides Advertisers With A Unified View Of The User Leveraging Its Proven
Social Solutions And The New ShareThis Id
Analyzing over 1B social signals and
3rd party data, ShareThis developed
the ShareThis ID to provide
advertisers with a UNIFIED VIEW of
users across PC, tablet and mobile.
The ShareThis ID identifies your
audience segment on any device.
SOCIAL
INTEREST:
Sports, Auto
& Tech
PURCHASED
A 2010 Prius
MALE
18-35
LIVES
In San
Francisco
UNIFIED VIEW

13. 13
Modeling and Prediction
USER-CENTRIC
Deliver Ads at the optimal
times
BETTER
PERFORMANCE
Leverage optimization
opportunities
OPTIMAL TIME
Target Users Who Likely
Convert
DON’T WASTE IMP.

14. 14
LIVE TEST ON INSURANCE CAMPAIGN
TESTED FOR TWO MONTHS AND MEASURED THE PERFORMANCE BY DFA.
The CPA test for the Insurance campaign showed 58% improvement on eCPA and 57% on
conversion rate (CVR).
57%

15. 0
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iPhone & “Bendgate” Activity
Phone Category in the last 35 days was greatly impacted by the recent iPhone 6 release, and
the most social activity within this time period pertained to “Bendgate” on 9/25
25 MM SOCIAL
ACTIONS
16 MM UNIQUE
USERS
620K SOCIAL
ACTIONS/DAY
Real Time Conversations on iPone (Last 30+ Days)
Announcement
Speculation
iPhone 6s
Announcement
iPhone 6 Release
and product reviews
“Bendgate” activity

16. AD
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SHARETHIS REAL-TIME ACTIVATION
:
:
:
:
iIphone 6 Review
I’m in the market for an new
Phone. . Any thoughts on the
iPhone 6?
Hurricane
Earthquake
Zombie
Apocalypse
ARTICLE CONSUMPTION
ARTICLE SHARE
MESSAGE DELIVERY

17. Questions for Real Time Marketing
• What message is trending?
• What is the velocity of the message?
• How to predict the message consumption
volume at a given time?
• What is the expected life time value of the
message?

18. Data
• 31 days of ShareThis event logs
• 11m unique URLs
• 27 categories
– Auto, Health, Food/Drink, Games, Entertainment,
etc.

19. The Shape of a Message

20. Message Pattern 1 by Day

21. Message Pattern 2 by Day

22. Message Pattern 3 by Day

23. Parameters for Message Life
life span
Time 2 peak
Half life

24. Parameters for Message Shape
• Speed of the message
– Time to peak
– Message half-life
• Size of the message
– Peak volume
– Volume at given time point
• Life time span

25. URL life span
20% of URLs
live for 1 day

26. URL time to peak volume
~60% of URLs
Reach peak volume
within 1 day
~80% of URLs
reach peak volume
within 11 day

27. URL half life
~40% of URLs
reach half life
within 1 day
~80% of URLs
reach half life
within 14 day

28. URL volume over 30 days
82% of URLs have
<= 100 page views
15% of URLs have
<= 1,000 page views
Family
Tv & video
Music & audio
Business
Crime_&_justice

29. Vertical differences
life span
Time 2 peak
Half life

30. Compared to the network network
• Among top 5 categories with the most URLs
• Each URL generates the least PVs – 80% less
• Fewer URLs live more than 14 days - 33% fewer
• Fewer URLs have 100+ PVs over 30 days - 55% fewer
The Most Ephemeral
Pets

31. Compare with the network average
• Among top 5 categories with the most URLs
• Each URL generates less PVs – 34% less
• Fewer URLs live more than 14 days - 46% fewer
• Fewer URLs have 100+ PVs over 30 days - 38% fewer
The Most Ephemeral
Runner Up
Law, Crime & Gov

32. Compared with the network average
• Less than 1% URLs
• Each URL generates the most PVs – 88% more
• More URLs live more than 14 days – 46% more
• More URLs have 100+ PVs over 30 days - 25% more
The Most Sticky
Games

33. Compared with the network average
• Less than 4% URLs
• Each URL generates the most PVs – 97% more
• More URLs live more than 14 days – 39% more
• More URLs have 100+ PVs over 30 days - 19% more
The Most Sticky
Runner Up
Food & Drink

34. Summary
• Monitoring real time conversations requires understanding of
message consumption.
– Most messages have a short life span
– Different verticals have different decay rates
• Implications for publishers
– Generate messages continuously
– Produce message at the speed of the vertical
– Recommend content based on velocity
• Implications for brands
– Conversation capture in real-time
– Continuous conversation monitoring
– Continuous message generation

35. Next steps
• Identify trending conversations based on
shapes of messages
• Predict expected volume of a message at any
given time
• Leverage social media to spread message

36. We’re Hiring!
THANK YOU!
Yan Qu| yqu@sharethis.com
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