From Engagement to Action: Activating Public Media Audiences
CDP, ROI Solutions and four public media organizations deploy a mission-critical ecosystem to support our collective future.
As local public media organizations, we need to serve the local community. Not just some of it, all of it. And on their terms, not ours.
This means we need to understand who they are, what they care about and how they like to engage with us.
Just as important, we also need to understand who we aren’t reaching and why.
And we need the resources to do more of all of it.
At the center of this work is one essential ingredient: data
Not just a collection of data, but an ecosystem that unlocks its potential and enables greater service to the community by deepening your understanding and view into individuals and constituencies, improving your ability to identify which efforts work and which don’t — and making it easier for you to consume the data, act on it quickly, learn from it and try again.
It’s an idea that has been building for years: a unified, systemwide ecosystem where audience data, donor data, content engagement, digital behavior and third-party insights come together in one place, where any size local public media organization has the ability to answer questions like:
Who is consuming our content, and where are they consuming it?
How is the audience migrating across platforms over time?
Who donates after watching, listening or reading — and how long does it take?
What patterns point toward conversion or future major giving?
Which audiences are we missing and potentially unintentionally leaving behind?
How do we activate insights in a way that feels personal, respectful, efficient and mission-driven?
What impact did a specific piece of content have in a peer market?
What is the psychographic profile of a group consuming specific content?
And then in that same space be able to quickly act on that data at scale to…
…individualize content, communications and solicitations based on preference.
…distribute content across social media platforms via automation.
...automate the execution of multi-channel communications.
…create more personalized experiences at the endpoints of the organization’s interactions with the audience/community (apps, websites, events, etc.).
That idea is now a reality — Phase 1 of the Audience Activation Platform (AAP) is live
While others are still talking about the need for this type of tool, early adopters are already busy, working in AAP to:
Leverage the Donor Prospecting Tool to discover new segments by combining donation history, event attendance, email engagement, viewing content and membership data in a single view.
Use AAP’s Donor 360 One-Pager to walk confidently into donor meetings by generating a donor 360 to see multi-year giving history, content consumption, household/member data, and event attendance in a single view.
Measure the success and impact of events with Event Attendee Analysis, viewing attendee giving history, giving potential, event attendance history, membership status and level to create follow-up segments and strategies for event attendees.
Gain actionable audience insights via AAP’s Integrated Viewing Dashboard to understand what content audiences are consuming by channel.
how does it work?
AAP represents the shared infrastructure public media will need to thrive in a new era. It helps organizations make sense of a dizzying array of disparate data by bringing it together and making it consumable. This includes everything from content engagement across platforms like Passport, Local Public and local websites to ticketing and event data, viewing information, CRM activity, email and SMS engagement, and digital signals from tools like Google Analytics, YouTube, and Meta.
Utilizing the first-ever Public Media Common Data Model, data is transformed into a usable, comparable, and actionable data warehouse. This gives every organization insights about their local communities and stakeholders, turning the AAP platform into a growth engine leading to faster audience development, better programming investment decisions and more sustainable revenue models.
Plus, with its built-in activation layer, AAP intelligence flows into actions like personalized outreach, automated journeys, predictive scores, and campaigns that learn and iterate. These all work together to help you develop more sustainable revenue models, supercharge donor conversions, improve retention and increase lifetime value.
Public media has always been at its strongest when we lean into collaboration, share what we have, and build what we need together
AAP goes beyond any individual organization’s data — the co-op approach means participating organizations can benefit from their collective data without compromising good governance. This shared resource will facilitate the identification of content engagement and giving patterns linked to specific attributes through advanced data analytics and machine learning, leveraging our collective, distinctive dataset. It will support the development of profiles founded upon these identified patterns, allowing for personalized communications tailored to individuals within their communities. By sharing local insights and profiles, the Audience Activation Platform aims to drive meaningful impact across the entire peer group of organizations.
AAP exists because four forward-thinking local organizations — Rocky Mountain Public Media, Nine PBS, WQED, and GBH — recognized the need and understood they could move faster and do more by pooling their resources and working together rather than alone. They joined CDP and ROI Solutions not just as funders, but as active collaborators who helped shape the roadmap, identify real-world use cases, and ensure this platform reflects the day-to-day realities of public media work across local PMOs of every shape and size.
Our work isn’t done yet
AAP is not a finished product; it’s a growing ecosystem. The first version went live in January, and this exciting journey is just getting started. With every new partner, the insights deepen, the models strengthen and the value multiplies. This really is the power of many. And the opportunity to shape what comes next is open to every organization that believes public media can do more when we do it together.
CDP and ROI Solutions are now planning the next phase of development. In addition to gathering feedback from Public Media Company, Greater Public, Station Resource Group, Major Market Group, American Public Television, PRX, and the Public Media Venture Group, we’re now having active discussions with the team at Public Media Infrastructure (PMI) on how to develop station-centric analytics infrastructure, products and services.
Special thanks to the many leaders across the system who have been sharing their thinking to help inform our journey up to this point.
At CDP, our commitment to collaboration is at the center of our own mission. We’re a trusted partner experienced in developing shared infrastructures with a long-standing commitment to data security, privacy and an organization’s right to retain ownership of their data at all times.
We’re eager to work with groups and individuals to create a community resource for all of public media. Let’s redefine what public media means — to us, it is not defined by former eligibility to receive federal funds. Are there other organizations or groups that we should include in this effort beyond organizations that were formerly eligible to receive federal funds from CPB? Is it time to expand our community to include other organizations that share our mission? We certainly think so.
As we begin this next chapter, we invite public media organizations across the country to join us. Get curious. Ask questions. Explore what this might make possible for your own organization, your team and your community.
Let’s build the next era of public media together — collaboratively, boldly and with the full power of our shared data behind us.