Behavioral Marketing Voodoo

Change is Inevitable

2009-07-01T14:03:00.001-04:00

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We've Moved!

2007-01-31T00:34:00.000-05:00

Check us out at our new blog Online Advertising Voodoo. Here we will cover behavioral targeting, search engine marketing, seo, media buying and the online advertising industry.

Click-Through Rate vs Action-Through Rate

2006-11-03T14:43:00.000-05:00

A recent study conducted by behavioral targeting ad network, BlueLithium, yielded some interesting results concerning ads and the relevance of the context in which they are shown in. The study included over 400 million impressions and evaluated click-through rates as well as clicks that resulted in actual conversions, what they called “action-through rates.

The results of the study found that advertisements that were consistent with the context of the behavior had the highest click through rates. Meaning that people who visited golf sites were more likely to click on ads for golf clubs; which seems sensible.

The study found something perhaps more interesting though. The “action-through” rates or rates of actual conversions were higher when the advertisements were shown outside of the context of the behavior. Meaning the ads for golf clubs that were shown on cooking sites produced more conversions then those shown on actual golf sites.

Based on the finding of this study one would have to conclude that the proper placement of behaviorally targeted ads should be determined by the desired results. If increased traffic is the main goal, then ads should be shown on sites that are consistent with the behavior. If action or conversion is the desired result then ads should be shown in a different context than the behavior.

"Behavioral Targeting" Search is Up

2006-10-25T10:33:00.000-04:00

In a Google search today, the phrase “behavioral targeting” yields around 3.5 million natural results, which is a significant change from when behavioral targeting first came about. This shows that behavior is becoming a major factor in successfully planning out campaigns.

The way the industry views and plans media must now start to include behavioral measures to help yield better results, its not just about reach and frequency anymore. Be on the look out for more targeted ads that appeal to your interests :-)

Next in BT: On-site Behavioral Targeting

2006-10-12T14:50:00.000-04:00

On-site behavioral targeting pulls individual web visitor’s noticed click stream behavior from current web visits and previous web visits to determine which content is the more practical to their interests. This content will then be served to them to achieve revenue, clickthrough or conversion while the visitor is still on the Web site. Once onsite behavioral targeting occurs, its effectiveness is measured and reviewed against the lift and yield that it delivered.

On-site behavioral targeting can help marketing organizations show better ROI since it delivers measurable and improved input since it’s reporting against a control group and the improvements in lift that it actually generates.

Facebook Testing Targeted "Sponsored Stories"

2006-10-05T10:07:00.000-04:00

Online social networking groups have become extremely popular recently as we have heard on the news, web and of course word of mouth. Groups like MySpace, Facebook, and LinkIn provide places for people all over the nation and world to come together online and exchange thoughts and ideas. These groups allow users to segment themselves into groups based on their behaviors and interests. Users can join communities or more focused groups within each network.

Online social networking groups create a unique environment for advertisers today. Advertisers no longer have to guess about the interests of perspective consumers. Facebook will now offer advertisers an opportunity to capitalize on these finely segmented groups. Facebook will include a “Sponsored Story” on users’ home pages that will be an advertisement selected based on the unique preferences of the user. Information that is provided in users’ profiles will supply the information needed to target the advertisements. Links in the ads will then lead back to either the advertiser’s own Facebook profile or their branded website. Facebook has been one network to take chances and make changes to the network some backfiring like implementing RSS feeds into a user's profile so everytime there was a change, the RSS feeds were updated. However, I think this one might just stick.

Give them What they Want

2006-09-26T22:40:00.000-04:00

Kids today are more technically savvy than ever before. They text message, download music and watch television all at the same time. As the consumers of the future, it is important to pay attention to their habits today, because they will only intensify in the years to come.

According to a recent article on clickz.com, young consumers today love to have ownership of a product. Build-A-Bear is a perfect example of this. Consumers are able to customize and create their stuffed friend and take it home in less than an hour. The ability to design a product is very important to kids; brands will need to cater to this in the future if they wish to keep consumers’ attention with their products.

It is so important to recognize the key characteristics of the audience being targeted. They hold the power to shoot you straight to the top or to bury your brand beneath your competitors. Understanding consumers’ key habits and preferences while reviewing brand values can help ensure advertisers are reaching as many consumers as possible.

Identifying Behaviorally Targeted Outlets

2006-09-19T14:26:00.000-04:00

Strategies to consider when identifying behaviorally targeted outlets include:

Review of search activity – By reviewing consumers search activity advertisers can plan the right time and message to deliver to the consumer based on their consideration cycle. Search activity often includes capturing keywords used to identify the site and keywords used in the site search.

Frequency and last time of visit – Frequency and last time of visit in relation to purchase behavior help determine when the consumer will actually make a purchase. Behaviors to track here include the amount of visits it takes before a typical converter to convert.

Conduct Surveys - Conducting surveys allow advertisers to gather rich data on which to segment. Advertisers can then utilize this data to create experiences that meet the needs of each user group.

User Personas - Gathering user personas allows advertisers to match behavioral data with these user personas to link behavioral data that is anonymous with a deeper and richer representation of a particular group that show signs of the same behavior. By being able to predict the content the users needs allows the advertiser to match them to a particular persona thus allowing advertisers to anticipate the needs of site visitors.

Give Consumers What they Want

2006-09-11T11:53:00.000-04:00

There is a variety of tactics that goes into any strategy. Behaviorally targeted campaigns call for different strategies based on the campaigns goals.

Keep Campaign Goals Top of Mind
Advertisers can’t just implement a behavioral targeting campaign because its what’s “hot” right now. Advertisers need to meet the goals of the campaign so if they are using behavioral targeting for a direct response campaign then they need a behavior that provides a good source of intent while if advertisers are using behavioral targeting for branding purposes then they need to target an audience that clearly is interested in the brand.

Don’t Over Saturate the Consumer
For a consumer interested in tennis equipment, they should not be served up ads on a tennis site because there is already too much tennis information on there to distract them. The ad should be served to them when they are doing something online non-related to tennis so it captures their attention.

Consumer’s Privacy
Advertisers should always protect consumer’s privacy. Any information collected should not be personally identifiable. Information collected should be anonymous if it’s going to used to determine behaviorally targeted campaign strategies.

To successfully execute a behaviorally targeting campaign, advertisers need to target the right people at the right time, with an appropriate ad based on their interests.

Social Networks: Untapped Potential

2006-09-05T16:36:00.000-04:00

From MySpace to You Tube to the Facebook, social networks are infiltrating the Internet at an amazing rate. According to Alexa.com, MySpace.com is one of the most visited sites on the web, ranking higher than Ebay, Amazon, and CNN. These social networks offer huge potential for behavioral targeting due to their reach to specific consumers.

Online communities are formed by people with shared common interest; be it sports, geographic location, universities, or just the search of a friend. These groups are already divided into strong identifiable behaviors.

So now what? Let’s take advantage of these resources!

According to Forrester Research, 43% of young consumers do not mind ads that pertain to their interests. Online communities allow marketers to identify those interests and effectively reach their target consumers. The future of behavioral marketing is in linking behavioral targeting with social networks. It’s just a matter of time before marketers cash in on it.

Behaviorally Targeted Sponsored Links

2006-08-28T09:13:00.000-04:00

If a company wants to be noticed today by consumers, one way of reaching them is by running a paid search campaign like Google Adwords, which allows for the advertisers to show up in the sponsored links section of Googles search engine. Ideally, its best to show up on the first page in one of the very first spots so consumers see you first opposed to your competition. However, as the web grows and advertisers take advantage of paid search campaigns to gain placement, consumers start to distrust the sponsored section.

Seevast, formally known as Kanoodle has developed a strategy that goes beyond the typical contextual ad placement giving consumers more than just a typical ad. Seevast took advantage of their contextual network reach by dropping cookies into the context of the reader thus allowing Seevast to see which types of sites the user has visited and target them with ads based on their search behavior. By doing this, clients can track performance in a different marketplace for behaviorally targeted sponsored links. The more listings an advertiser has, the more likely the listings will differ, allowing advertisers the control needed to manage a behaviorally targeted campaign.

Ads will continue to saturate the web. With that said, wouldn’t you rather view an ad that is targeted towards your interest also knowing that an advertiser is paying for you to see that ad?

# 1 is the Loneliest Number

2006-08-21T21:27:00.000-04:00

Behavioral Marketing Campaigns don't need to be limited to one type of behavioral targeting. Revenue Science explains three different types of targeting that can be used separately or combined depending on the advertiser's strategy.

Inventory Extension

Inventory extension allows advertisers to extend their inventory outside a specific section of a site, still most common among finance, automotive and technology advertisers. Inventory extension behavioral targeting is often used when an advertiser is buying upfront or in bulk.

Life Stage Targeting

Mentioned in a previous behavioral targeting post, life stage targeting allows advertisers to target consumers who are going through life altering events such as becoming a parent or buying a house. These consumers usually spend a decent amount of time shopping online before making a purchase therefore advertisers can easily target them based on their previous shopping behaviors.

Behavioral Search Retargeting

Search Retargeting works where consumers clicked on your search ad but didn't convert. Then advertisers can go and retarget them with ads on a network of sites. Here, the advertiser only gets charged if the consumer clicks on the ad.

Some of these strategies can lead to successful campaigns when used independently but there are also strategies that can lead to more effective campaigns if more than one type of behavioral targeting is used.

Does your Creative Capture your Audience?

2006-08-14T21:58:00.000-04:00

Behavioral targeting can capture places a consumer has visited online and segment them into a group whether it being segmented as a sports enthusiast, first time parent, women shoe shopping fanatic, etc. With ever advancing technologies, its easy to capture this information, however a key ingredient to a successful marketing campaign is the creative. Depending on the ad network that the ad is placed, most likely there will be other ads visible to the viewer so the ad that is behaviorally targeted towards this specific user must draw their attention away from the other content on the page. So what makes a killer ad?
Determine what your drivers are; what motivates the viewer to take action? Know your audience such that men think differently then women, as different age groups interpret things differently. These are a few factors that can increase market share, ROI and brand awareness when implementing a behavioral targeting campaign.

Behavioral Targeting Growth and Acceptance

2006-08-07T16:41:00.000-04:00

According to global leader in behavioral targeting, Revenue Science:

64 % of interactive agencies are currently using a type of behavioral targeting
83% of behavioral targeting users are satisfied with results
13% of media buys are behaviorally targeted
Behavioral targeting represents 21% of media buys, a 62 % since last year

Behavioral targeting looks like its here to stay for a while. Wouldn't you rather be targeted with ads that are at least of interest to you since it doesn't appear that ads will be going away any time soon?

http://www.revenuescience.com.

Life Comes at you Fast, so Will These Ads

2006-07-31T09:50:00.002-04:00

Becoming a homeowner, having a child, getting married, graduating college…these occurrences are life events, ideal for behavioral targeting. These events are time consuming and usually involve some research and planning time leading consumers online to browse the net for information. With use of behavioral targeting, advertisers can message to these consumers in effort to deliver better results and spend their ad dollars more wisely.

For instance, take buying your first car as the life event. Someone may spend time researching different outlets for information on new cars, used cars, SUV’s, sedans, etc. Once these actions start to occur, behavioral targeting can zoom in on this behavior and target the consumer with car related ads whether they are on a car related Web site or checking their email or something else non related because based on their previous behaviors, advertisers know that they have shown interest. People that shop offline, such as first time parents, may be encouraged to sign up for specials which in return, give advertisers the information they need to then go and target them online.

Although these life events are life changing, they happen fast and therefore need to be acted upon quickly for both parties to benefit.

5 Reasons Why Behavioral Targeting is Something to Consider

2006-07-24T16:25:00.000-04:00

Behavioral targeting is an easy sell. Behavioral targeting takes observed behaviors that have in the past resulted in certain activities as a way to predict what will work to meet the goals of the campaign.

Behavioral targeting allows for the advertiser to reach the consumer based off of a past behavioral tendency outside of the normal context of that specific behavior.

Behavioral targeting allows reaching consumers outside of the norm so advertisers can reach them with relevant ads unrelated to the brand.

Behavioral targeting is low cost and it still allows advertisers to reach their target audience. This results in less competitive ad clutter for the client’s message.

There are two types of behavioral targeting- for publishers and networks. Networks can re-target and re-message a user for the advertiser. Publishers can reach a consumer for the advertiser in areas that could be less expensive yet is just as targeted.

In short, behavioral targeting has the potential to meet goals of a media campaign cost efficiently and effectively.

Engaging Consumers Through Ads

2006-07-17T19:54:00.000-04:00

If not already, marketer’s goals should include engaging a consumer. However, marketers have to be careful in their thinking here because often times consumers may perceive engagement differently. A general term of engagement is asking how much is the consumer getting out of the ad? So, if the ad wasn’t delivered, then the consumer never consumed it. If the consumer saw the ad but it didn’t register to their interest, it was a wasted impression. That’s what makes targeting the right audience critical in media campaigns. Content, the brand and the ad creative are all important but the main objective should be to engage the consumer.

Engaging an audience online is new data and metrics that marketers and advertisers can start to utilize over traditional marketing metrics. High level metrics of where the ad was placed and how many clicks it received will lead escalate to discovering who is viewing the ad and if they were engaged. Marketers must do this by creating and delivering ads that consumers actually want to see. Today, it’s all about the consumers likes and needs, not what the advertiser or media wants.

Targeting ROI Results Using Behavioral Tactics on Networks

2006-07-10T20:38:00.000-04:00

Networks have a mass reach and high quantity with some networks reaching 80 percent of the online audience. Networks have the ability to optimize based on site conversion along with proficient data collection. Networks allow for a wide variety of ad creative sizes since they have the potential to run on so many sites. Ultimately this allows for creative testing. The more data and better optimization turn into a more cost effective CPM.

Behavioral targeting on networks comes with some disadvantages as well. If you run ads across multiple networks, its likely that that you may come up against redundant site lists resulting in diminishing returns. As well, the optimization language may vary from network to network. So it’s important to use other online tactics and media buys to help drive site traffic instead of just relying on behavioral targeting. Testing is important to determine which channel is providing the greatest return.

You Never Know When you are being Behaviorally Targeted

2006-07-03T17:11:00.000-04:00

Dating companies have the perfect opportunity to seize information that is true and beneficial for multiple reasons, one to actually set up a date, the other to gather accurate psychographic information to potentially use in marketing campaigns. It’s a different way of gathering information unlike marketing case studies where people are being paid to give out information, which may not even be true.

One dating company was working with Mary J Blige in promoting her upcoming tour and took into factor people that were attending the event such as what cars they were driving. From that they were able to determine that these people were looking to attend a piece of mind campaign from the car they were driving opposed to an adrenaline rush campaign from other cars they might have driven up in. Dress was another factor looked into such as if they were fit or overweight. In shape people may be interested in personal fitness while overweight people may be involved with Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers.

People in the dating industry don’t care about demographics, they are interested in psychographics since people that are dating usually have the highest level of disposable income and are looking for things to do and buy. Thus with behavioral targeting, you can target consumers based on their interests and not come off as a marketer who tries to sell, sell, sell. In theory, if you are honest, not only may you meet your significant other but while roaming the web, you may be targeted with at least ads of interest to you.

Types of Behavioral Targeting

2006-06-26T19:54:00.000-04:00

Two types of behavioral targeting are extended-content targeting and purchase-intent targeting. Extended-content targeting includes reaching out to an audience that’s shown interest in specific interest-based content. For example if a consumer looks up three golf Web sites in a week, they may be targeted as an avid golfer therefore later being targeted with a golf ad when they are doing something unrelated like reading the news. Impressions on content sections or Web sites are limited so publishers use this opportunity to expand their inventory while providing advertisers with opportunities to continue to reach a preferred audience.

Purchase-intent targeting reaches viewers that are looking for a product or service. In-market consumers make take several different actions where advertisers determine when to serve them an ad to persuade their purchase intent. For instance, someone shopping for a car may see an ad with a special car incentive while doing something non related. Purchase-intent targeting is also termed retargeting or remessaging. Advertisers are targeting consumers who have visited their sites previously but not necessarily the publisher’s site so the advertiser may retarget them on a publisher’s site to reconnect them with the ad.

To read more about behavioral research targeting, click here.

Behavioral Ad Targeting

2006-06-19T11:20:00.000-04:00

When it comes to marketing, there is a wide range of goals that marketers pursue such as acquiring new customers, ROI, improving customer longevity, increasing wallet share, increasing program response rates, reducing target marketing costs and so forth. Marketers have been successful in pursuing these goals mainly direct response goals not branding ones through contextual, behavioral, geographic and search online ad targeting. Advertising.com does an ongoing survey of U.S. web publishers and found that in 2005 19.2% of respondents cited that branding was a main objective of advertisers and this year it’s a 41.5% objective.

So even with ads generated by search engines, which is more of a direct response medium, the target objective is branding. Behavioral targeting is just one of the upcoming services that allows for these goals to be met.

Are the Ads you View Starting to Become Relevant to your Characteristics?

2006-06-12T20:21:00.000-04:00

The Internet has become the source of choice for advertisers that want to get something in front of the right person at the right time and place. It’s important to provide relevant ads since those are the most likely noticed compared to the annoying pop up ads we all wish never made it’s way into the advertising realm. The Internet can provide advertisers with data on how users interact with advertising on a large scale and the content provided. Given that, it allows for advertisers to target based on audience demographic characteristics, day parting, geo targeting, context, user permission and segmented user behavior to name a few.

When it comes to behavioral targeting, advertisers are looking to measure awareness, consideration, preference, post-click or post-impression sales, intent to purchase and so forth. Behavioral targeting has the potential of benefiting not only media companies and technology providers but could help in increasing online media budgets if the ads meet the marketers goals set prior to the launch of the behavioral targeting campaign.

When in Doubt, Opt-out

2006-06-05T14:59:00.000-04:00

Behavioral targeting can offer marketing campaigns much success however there is some precautions to take even after smart strategic planning, media negotiation and creative design.

Behavioral targeting networks can vary from poor quality to high quality sites. Ask for an opt-out list to ensure your brand is only appearing on Web sites that meet your guidelines. For example, opt-out from peer-to-peer sites if you are uncomfortable with user-generated content that may contain profanity and revealing photos or opt-out from blogs where advertisers have lack of control over editorial content. If you don’t want to end up on spyware sites, offensive or illegal Web sites be sure to ask for an opt-out list to make certain your ads are only going to appear on sites you approve of. Stay tuned for more precautions of behavioral targeting.

Adservers are up One

2006-05-30T11:16:00.000-04:00

Some adservers now allow the capability of behavioral targeting meaning they also feature consolidating tags and site analytics all in one. This makes for a single source of data reducing potential data discrepancies between systems. This gives publishers more control over the whole process from trafficking, optimization to results reporting giving publishers more time to focus on their client relationships and other aspects of their business.

With ad management systems beginning to incorporate behavioral targeting into their system doesn’t mean the specialist companies will dissipate. This gives them more opportunities to partner, license and sell access to their own networks.

Proof that Placement of Ads Does Matter

2006-05-22T17:31:00.000-04:00

In past studies Next Century Media found that online audiences respond to behaviorally targeted ads at an advanced rate than contextually positioned ads because of the clutter on context pages. The surprise of being provided a behavioral ad in an unexpected place also increased the audience's response.

Two types of measures that Next Century Media use are:

Evaluative measures - What happened
Diagnostic measures – Why they happened.

Next Century Media is more confident about their hypothesis that clutter of competing ads in the same category in contextual, versus behavioral targeting which are ads placed in areas with less clutter and enhanced by the surprise of seeing an ad that has nothing to do with surrounding editorial content of the page the audience is viewing. This drives the tendency for the audience to look longer and more at the same ads in the behavioral targeting setting. If you are interested in learning more about their past study read the whole story here.