Redlands, California-ESRI, the worldwide leader in geographic information system (GIS) technology, announces that the Arizona Republic, a newspaper serving 1.275 million households in Maricopa and Pinal counties in Arizona, is using its ArcGIS family of software to give advertisers the option to reach consumers on a “per-piece” basis. This option allows advertisers to more accurately target consumers than by traditional means of marketing by ZIP Code, census block group, or carrier route.

“Using ESRI’s software has made selling inserts to advertisers easier,” says Jay Visnansky, senior systems analyst for the Arizona Republic. “We are able to offer solutions we couldn’t before including selecting demographics based on geography and selecting individual households.  It has given our customers a more competitive edge.”

Sales staff log on to a map-based application of the Arizona Republic’s coverage territory to view subscribers and nonsubscribers and select from a pull-down list of demographics to help advertisers target customers more precisely. For example, if an advertiser is interested in customer income, they can choose that demographic variable and the value, such as household income between $50,000 and $74,999. More demographic variables can then be queried such as finding only swimming pool owners in the income bracket they selected. Using GIS, advertisers are able to specifically market to the customers they would like by selecting particular households for inserts, instead of blanketing an entire carrier route, ZIP Code, or census block.

“The Arizona Republic is a good example of how ESRI’s commercial business customers are using our software to work smarter,” says Steve Benner, director of commercial business, ESRI. “In today’s information-rich environment, GIS can help companies find the information they need to do their jobs with the least amount of time and cost to them.”

The Arizona Republic first turned to ESRI software in 2001 to fine-tune the process of targeting customers for its advertisers. Some advertisers wanted to target certain segments of the population or certain geographic areas. Some chain merchants wanted to create different versions of their ads depending on the targeted customer, advertising one set of items for sale at one store and a different set at another.

The Arizona Republic was able to offer its advertisers the ability to precisely target customers using ArcIMS, ESRI’s solution for delivering dynamic maps and GIS data and services via the Web, along with ArcSDE, which is used for maintaining large datasets of customers, and ArcView for creating custom applications. Between 200 to 250 sales staff access the system across the Phoenix valley. Using GIS, the Arizona Republic has been able to increase both the number of advertisers and the revenue from their legacy advertisers.

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About ESRI

Since 1969, ESRI has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 5,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world’s mapping and spatial analysis. ESRI is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com.

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