Audience discovery – Targeting Passions

I read an interview of Bill Gossman, CEO Revenue Science on Media Post’s Behavioral Insider. Bill talked about the concept of “audience discovery” to find the right audience for an advertiser.

Here is what Bill Said “In terms of working with an advertiser or agency, the method is to start with their conception of what an ideal consumer for their product or brand would be, and then to locate the audience whose patterns of behavior and passions (as identified by their patterns of engagement) most clearly connect to that model. We call it ‘audience discovery.’”

I agree with Bill, the better you understand the consumers behavior (now called passion) the better targets you will you. That’s the whole premise of Behavioral Targeting to begin with. You start with a very basic set of behavior e.g. somebody who visits a “Auto Section” on a site or an “Auto Site” in the network. The refine your segment by adding other criteria such as a user who then visits say “baby cloths” site, now this user might be somebody who is probably expecting a kid etc. So could be a better target for a minivan. The more behavioral criteria you add the better targets you get.

However the more granular you get with your segments the reach becomes a problem. Yes there will be quality but reach might not be enough to justify the cost and efforts of reaching these targets. For publishers this also causes inventory management issues. This is the reasons why BT providers created predefined segments.

Read my previous posts on Behavioral Targeting

Origninally posted on http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/06/audience-discovery-targeting-passions.html

Advertisements need to continue increasing personalization

According to Sean Ammirati at Read/Write Web this statement was made at Supernova conference by Sheryl Sandberg , Google’s Global VP of Sales and Operations while giving a presentation entitled What’s next for advertising?.

Sean Ammirati Says
“This [statement by Sheryl] was surprising to me, given that I don’t believe Google has publicly announced any plans to incorporate behavioral targeting into their ad delivery system.”

Those who have been reading my blog know that I have been speculating about Google entering the Behavioral Targeting field. This statement by Sheryl reaffirms my belief.

Why do I think Behavioral Targeting makes sense over any other form of personalization?

Let’s start with the type of data that can power Online Personalization. There are 3 main form of data collection that can be used for personalization:

1. Explicit User/Visitor preferences – This is what a users tells a website about their preferences, interests etc and the site serves them appropriate experience, products, content, ads etc.
Example of this are
my.yahoo.com – you customize what you want and how you want it.

2. User/Visitor Demographic data – This form of personalization takes users Demographic data and serves up appropriate product, content, ads etc. recommendations based on those demographics. This could be a combination of explicit and implicit (location) form of data collection. Most of the data however is entered by users e.g. age, gender, income etc.

3. Behavioral Targeting – This form of personalization does not require any explicit user data. In this form of personalization Users’ intent and preferences are inferred from their browsing behavior via an anonymous cookie and not tied to any PII (Personally Identifiable Information) data. Based on users’ behavior marketers put the users in one or more of the predefined segments and then serve content, products or ad appropriate for the segments that the visitor falls in. Publishers/Networks/Advertisers don’t know who the visitor is all they know that cookie ABC123 is somebody who might be in the market for a new car. Read Behavioral Targeting 101 for more details on how behavioral targeting works.

1. The problem with “Explicit User Preference” is that it is mostly dependent on choices that a site provides to the visitors. If those choices are not indicative of what users really likes then it will give the wrong indication of visitors’ preferences. Say the site only provides me to choose Red, Green and Yellow colors, while my favorites is Blue then I will choose one of the given colors even though it does not show my true preference. Many times the visitors, in order to get through the registration form quickly, will fill whatever choice they see first. Expecting them to enter their preferences so that you can serve them appropriate Ads is not going to work. Preferences also change with time but visitors don’t go back and change their preferences unless there is a very compelling reason to do so. Getting an appropriate ad is not a very compelling reason. This form of explicit data collection border on the line of PII data and hence can suffer backlash from privacy groups.

2. The problem with “User/Visitor Demographic Data” is that a lot of visitor do not provide correct demographic information. It also suffers a lot of the same issues as “Explicit User Preferences”. User’s Demographic also borders on the line of PII data.

Behavioral Targeting on the other hand does not rely on visitors’ explicit information. As visitors preferences change so will their onsite behavior, say if was looking for a sports car about a year ago and now my situation is different and I am looking for a SUV, it will be reflected by my browsing behavior. I don’t have to go change my explicit preferences that I entered about a year ago (no waste of my time); my behavioral data will show that. Absence of PII makes it even more preferred way of personalization of Ads.

Originally Posted at http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/06/advertisements-need-to-continue.html

Behavioral Targeting results in 3 Fold increase in click through rate

I have been writing about Behavioral Targeting since the beginning of this blog. Since my writing there have several studies out touting the growth of Behavioral Targeting. What was missing in all these days was any latest case study on Behavioral targeting. In every article, I saw the same case studies by Revenue Science and Tacoda that I had seen year or two ago. Maybe I missed them; it is possible since it is hard to keep track of everything.

An article on WSJ titled How Marketers Hone Their Aim Online reports

“When Pepsi-Cola North America wanted to make a splash on the Web this spring to promote its new low-calorie vitamin-enhanced water, Aquafina Alive, the beverage company didn’t run ads just anywhere on the Internet. It placed ads only on sites it knew would be visited by people interested in healthy lifestyles.
Pepsi was using an increasingly popular online advertising strategy called behavioral targeting, in which marketers analyze consumers’ online activities to figure out who is most likely to be interested in its product — and then place ads on whatever sites those consumers are visiting.
In this case, the beverage giant worked with independently owned New York-based behavioral ad network Tacoda Inc. to identify health-conscious people by looking at traffic to sites about healthy lifestyles over a month-long period. Then Pepsi arranged to place Aquafina Alive ads on some of the 4,000 Web sites affiliated with Tacoda so the ads would pop up whenever these health-conscious consumers visited.
The result? Pepsi recorded a threefold increase in the number of people clicking on its Aquafina Alive ads compared with previous campaigns.”

As I wrote in my article yesterday campaign success can not be judged by CTR alone you need to look beyond CTR. I would like to see more details about this study, so if anybody from Tacoda is reading this please let me know where I can find the details.

I hope to see more case studies like this. If you come across a case study then please send those to me. I will compile the results of various BT case studies in my future post. If you are an advertiser or publisher who has been involved with BT I would like to talk to you and get your views on BT.

Originally from http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/06/behavioral-targeting-results-in-3-fold.html

Fishing From Barrel: Only Book on Behavioral Targeting

I came across “Fishing From A Barrel” by Rob Graham, Director of Training and Founder of LearningCraft. I think this is the first and only book on Behavioral Targeting (if you have seen another one then please let me know). I am halfway through the book and will post my review when I am done. Based on what I have read so far, I would recommend this book to those are interested in Behavioral Targeting and want to learn more.

According to LearningCraft.com Fishing From A Barrel takes an energetic and foundational look at how behavioral targeting is changing the face of advertising as we know it and introduces readers to the fundamentals of behavioral targeting technologies and how advertisers and publishers can use BT to achieve greater campaign and ROI results for their online advertising.

While still in its infancy, Behavioral Targeting is filling in many of the holes that have been part of the direct marketing landscape for over 100 years. Fishing From A Barrel brings readers on a journey that introduces them to concepts such as:

The future promise of Behavioral Targeting
Why Mass Marketing isn’t the best way to reach an audience
How to target and market to ‘individuals’
How to plan for and create highly targeting ad campaigns
How publishers are using BT to turn a huge profit
What you need to know about ‘Customerization’
How new targeting data goes well beyond demography
Why contextual targeting often falls short
Understanding and using ad networks
Using BT with traditional media channels
How to collect and use relevant web analytics
Understanding new definitions of Reach, Acquisition and Conversion
How to create targeted audience segments
The importance of privacy to consumers
What makes consumers consume?
Meeting consumer needs and expectations with every campaign
The Foundational Communications Model
Communicating Interactively
Who’s who in Behavioral Targeting

You can buy the book directly from LearningCraft.com. Let me know what you think about this book.

Additional Reading: My Blog Posts on Behavioral Targeting

Behavioral Targeted Ad Spending to Rise to 3.8 Billion by 2011

If you are reader of this blog then you know that I have been writing about Behavioral Targeting from the beginning.
I predicted earlier this year that Behavioral Targeting will become a common term among marketers.

A recent report by eMarkters furthers validates my prediction. According a latest study by Marketers Spending for Internet advertising with a behavioral targeting component will soar to 3.8 billion by 2011.

There are three key reasons for the large spending gains:
1. Behavioral targeting helps marketers reach a more engaged audience with fewer ad impressions
2. Behavioral targeting helps publishers monetize their “long tail” pages — the non-premium or remnant inventory that either is sold for less money or remains unsold
3. Even though individuals are often not aware of the process, many tend to find ads targeted by their actions to be more relevant to their needs, and therefore more palatable or even welcomed

Behavioral targeting spending will continue to grow at a significant rate, peaking at nearly 74% next year due to a combination of greater advertiser acceptance, greater publisher support (only about one-third of Web sites can do behavioral targeting, according to Advertising.com) and greater overall online ad spending with the national elections and Summer Olympic Games.

By 2011, “very large publishers will be selling 30% to 50% of their ad inventory using this [behavior targeting] technique,” predicts Bill Gossman, CEO of Revenue Science.

Originally posted at http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/06/behavioral-targeted-ad-spending-to-rise.html