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Media Coverage
"Taking
Measure: Savor the Flavors"
by John Nardone, May 2008 Issue
If you are like many other marketers and media planners, you're
probably struggling to make behavioral targeting work. Behavioral
targeting confuses people. The term encompasses a wide range of
tactics and methodologies and is further obfuscated by new media
networks trying to differentiate themselves by claiming the latest and
greatest approach.
As a result, clients and planners are advancing carefully, doing trial buys with
many networks in order to learn what will work, what will not, and why.
To me, behavioral targeting refers to any targetable audience that is defined by a
common Web behavior, and comes most often in one of three flavors.
First is remarketing, which refers to the targeting of cookies who have visited the
client's own Web site. Remarketing can involve very sophisticated matching of
offer and creative against specific on-site behaviors. For example, a consumer
who abandons a shopping cart or a sign-up page is targeted with online ads
containing sweetened offers over the next several weeks. In the best case, the
offers reflect knowledge gleaned from their entire interaction on the Web site.
Obviously, remarketing can be very effective, since it targets consumers who
have demonstrated interest in the client's product. However, remarketing efforts
often suffer from lack of scale because the volume of visitors to client sites tends
to be very small.
Next, behavioral segmentation refers to a media seller's packaging of groups of
cookies who have visited sites (other than the client's own) that suggest a need
or receptivity for the client's category of product. For example, all cookies that
have visited automotive-related sites over the last 60 days may be packaged as
a segment of people likely to be in the market for a new car. Media sellers invest
in building this package for one reason: to sell more of their less desirable
inventory at higher CRMs. But currently, there are no standards to define
behavioral segments, so every network has its own.
Lack of standards is not necessarily a bad thing insofar as it leaves media
companies free to innovate.
However, this does put a burden on the media planner. To be successful, the
planner either has to invest a lot of time to investigate and keep current on each
network's specific methodology or (as is usually the case) rely on trial and error
to find what works for each client. But thoughtful media pros are rarely satisfied
with simply knowing that a tactic worked or did not. They want to know why. And
here is where the behavioral networks often fall short: They provide little analysis
(or even reporting) of the composition of delivered audience. Why? Because
sellers put their analytic efforts into defining and packaging behavior segments tobe sold; their systems are not set up to analyze a specific client's results. From
the advertiser's point of view, they are a black box.
Last is predictive targeting, which is often lumped together with BT, but is actually
quite different.
Predictive targeting is client-aligned, rather than publisher-aligned or selleraligned.
It is used by the advertiser for the advertiser to achieve their goals at the
lowest CPM possible, not to support higher sell-side CPMs.
Predictive targeting uses more than behavior data and is transparent to the
client. It includes objectively defined user data which, when combined with
behavior, provides many more targeting dimensions for the advertiser to take
advantage of. Importantly, clients have complete visibility to all the analysis and
targeting rules, as well as audience composition related to impressions, clicks
and response. There is no black box.
Predictive targeting is forward looking. It uses mathematical algorithms to predict
what a user will most likely interact with, and then learns and is adjusted based
on the actual results. By contrast, behavioral targeting is backward looking. It is
based on cataloging what a user has done in the past and leaves the media
planner to evaluate whether or not past behavior will be a good indicator of future
performance.
Experienced marketers will incorporate all three approaches in their plans. They
will use remarketing to take advantage of consumers who have "raised their
hand" at the client's site. They will use predictive targeting to understand who
those consumers are, and then max out the amount of that audience and
response the predictive vendor can cost-effectively deliver. Finally, they will fill
out their plans with behavioral networks who prove themselves by cost-effectively
delivering client goals.
This article was originally featured in the May 2008 issue of Media Magazine.
Click
here to see the original article (registration required).
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