Segmentation isn’t new. For years, brands and regulators alike have tailored strategies to different audience groups: novices and experts, younger and older, vulnerable and resilient. But while this helps to some extent, it only scratches the surface.
What we’ve seen through our work with the Gambling Commission is that understanding people purely in terms of how they interact with a product or service isn’t enough. To truly respond to the complexity of today’s digital world, we need to shift from an inside-out approach (what we want to know about users) to an outside-in one looking at people in the full context of their lives.
Why this matters?
Take gambling. It’s easy to analyse how people use promotional offers or navigate platforms. But behaviour is shaped long before any of that.
Novice gamblers often come in via recommendations, social platforms or cultural moments, curious and exploratory. Women may use gambling as a form of private downtime, with engagement rising around events like UEFA Euro 2024. Financially vulnerable individuals may engage more frequently, not because they feel confident, but because gambling has become embedded in coping strategies or habits.
These patterns aren’t just about products. They’re about identity, emotion and circumstance, and they shift over time. To map them meaningfully, we need a broader lens.
The value of insight in motion
If we keep trying to understand audiences solely through point-in-time research or interaction data, we’ll miss what really matters. That’s why we need to:
- Draw on always-on insight, not just scheduled surveys
- Use digital intelligence tools to access real, lived context
- Track change over time to see how behaviours evolve, not just what they look like today
This is especially critical in sectors like gambling, where behaviour is fast-moving and emotionally driven. But the same applies elsewhere:
- In education, adult learners may start a course motivated by career goals but drop off due to childcare pressures or confidence dips. Always-on tracking can help identify those points of friction early.
- In finance, people often join during market hype, but continuous tracking reveals when confidence fades or life changes impact risk appetite.
Wherever decisions are complex and personal, we need insight that reflects the full picture, over time, in context and in motion.
The solution
At Yonder, we believe the most powerful insight comes from seeing people in the round, not just as users or segments, but as individuals navigating busy, sometimes chaotic lives.
It’s about shifting the focus from what people do with brands to what shapes their decisions in the first place. And that means listening more, looking wider, and designing research that keeps pace with real life.
When we do that, we stop chasing behaviours after the fact and start creating systems that make sense from the outside in.