The Drift from Upstream
Clarity and Perspective about Online Marketing since 2001
Targeting:Finding the Guardrails
At last week’s ad:tech conference in New York, I sat in on a fascinating and articulate discussion of networks, exchanges, DSPs and targeting. While this rather sensible and illuminating conversation was taking place in a breakout room, the exhibit hall was a carnival midway of the latest whiz-bang microtargeting technologies and services. (Whether you want to track me down based on my current global position, my web activity, my social connections or just about anything I’ve ever done, said, considered or intended online, there’s clearly nowhere left for me to hide.) So the questions I asked of the panelists during Q&A might better have been broadcast over the P.A. system at the Javits Center:
What rational role should targeting play within a digital marketing strategy? And where are its sane economic limits?
SPECIAL MESSAGE: This week The Drift is underwritten by aiMatch, a comprehensive, intelligent new ad serving platform that delivers a single solution for publishers to create, forecast, deliver and analyze online media products. More at www.aimatch.com.
For too long we’ve watched the targeting joyride skid down a winding road with no economic guardrails. The direct response advertisers, agencies and technology vendors at the wheel have apparently given little thought to what the next wide turn might bring. Deal sizes go down, complexity goes up, all in the service of shaving a few cents off acquisition cost or goosing the click rate a half a point.
Before we take targeting to even more ridiculous extremes, let me suggest a more rational role for it within the marketing plan: as frequency. The online marketing plan can and should include lots of contextual placements and reach against a broad but relatively defined audience. Targeting is then deployed as a second wave, “heavying up” the message against key customers, much the way targeted print and vertical cable channels are used to compliment broadcast.
We collectively botched the targeting story for much of the past decade, but we’re getting a rare second chance to get it right. Video and social connectivity are ushering in the next major spending infusion by top advertisers, and we shouldn’t assume they’re going to geek out on targeting the way we have to date. Also, the power balance is subtly shifting back to media owners with strong content brands and environments, and tech providers like Collective and Lotame (among many others) are putting targeting and audience management solutions into their hands now. Let’s hope that these publishers bring a new level of judgment, perspective and restraint a targeting culture that’s run amok.
Categories Online Advertising, Online Marketing | Tags: Ad:Tech, Collective, Lotame, microtargeting, Targeting
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ted ryan November 11, 2010 at 11:04 am
Your thoughts are always on target Doug
Well said
Shawn Riegsecker November 11, 2010 at 12:10 pm
Thank you. Finally a logical post for the industry.
Your “great idea” for your client can’t start and end with “RTB audience-based buying via ad exchanges”. That’s supplementary to your ad campaign, it’s not the primary thrust. Audience based buying is a secondary dish to the meat and potatoes of what makes advertising successful.
Prescient once again Doug, thanks for the stand.
Mark McLaughlin November 11, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Thank you for saying this: “The online marketing plan can and should include lots of contextual placements and reach against a broad but relatively defined audience.”
You hit the nail on the head. This is exactly what CLIENTS want. In their language, they want broad reach against a demographic target as the foundational layer of a media plan. The simple metric that they need to grasp whether or not that foundation is in place is called GRPs and R/F.
Once that layer is established, refined and sophisticated targeting opportunities that “heavy-up” against their more important customers is welcomed. But, the foundation comes first.
The painful thing is that I have to put CLIENTS in all caps because digital ad agencies disagree with their own clients about what they should want. Digital media buyers view the effort to build reach against a demographic target as an old-fashioned and inefficient exercise.
Digital media buyers literally call their own clients “dumb” for wanting to build mass reach against a demographic target. They keep falling on this sword almost as if they are determined to keep the budgets that they manage small.
Until digital buyers decide that their own clients have some pretty smart people in charge of their marketing campaigns and that the client’s opinion about reach, demographic targets and the GRPs R/F metric is legitimate, they will relegate themselves into the very small corner of the marketing mix that they complain they’ve been left in.
amit November 15, 2010 at 10:13 pm
OK, don’t mean to lash out at you in particular. I just don;t understand why anyone would ask a question, which to me is seemingly vague.
“What rational role should targeting play within a digital marketing strategy? And where are its sane economic limits? ”
That’s extremely non-specific, too broad and subjective.
Also..regarding
“let me suggest a more rational role for it within the marketing plan: as frequency.”…”heavying up” the message against key customers, ”
if you wish to reach an audience, target the bloody audience segment. Why would you run a broad campaign first???
Doug Weaver November 16, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Amit, your comments are fair and you’re not lashing out at all. Since you asked….
…..The marketer who does nothing but target and retarget a narrow audience segment is like the political party that only speaks to it’s base. It becomes narrow and self-referential. Marketing is about audience growth, and tactically I think it’s vital that we cast a net wide enough to reach those customers who’ve not yet self-identified or been targeted. As a wise auto marketer once said, if I only start talking to the customer when he’s ready to buy a Mercedes Benz it’s too late.
Last point: You look at this issue also purely through the lens of a marketer who says “I want to buy only x and y.” That’s fine, and you’ll be able to get it if you’re willing to confine your presence to the long tail fringes of the web. But high touch, content rich publishers know that current targeting practices are economically unsustainable and they will vote with their feet.
Thanks for writing.
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