When the commercial interruption replaced sponsored programming on television, David Ogilvy reacted:
“I am angered to the point of violence by the commercial interruption of the programs. Are the men who own the television stations so greedy that they cannot resist such intrusive affronts to the dignity of man?” David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man, 1963
In our day and age we have gone from tolerant to immune to advertising messages we are shown. In the digital landscape ads are presented in very intelligent ways, pushing adverts across different channels and pacing messages depending on the position in the conversion funnel.
When running campaigns a brand should always consider reaching enough potential prospects, but also adding adequate intelligence in the process of conversion. This could mean using data to target different behaviors, engage in a two-way direction through incentives or promotions or understanding whether it’s time to replace an ad with a survey.
Further exploring the targeting aspect we all know there’s plenty of information stored in cookies, but what happens if you are using a shared device? You end up reading an article about last Sunday football match when a banner distracts you presenting the latest female shoes collection! Is it subliminal messaging from your partner or cookies limitations?
The quest on moving away from targeting machines to targeting user “intent” depends on the ability to observe user behavior from a more holistic point of view, bringing together pieces of information such as current page, referral and where users clicks next. Plus, the “holy grail” for advertisers in making sense of intent data is “involvement”, such as actions, newsletter subscription, registration for a trial and eventually purchase. On the other hand, it is also true that portable devices (such mobiles and tablets) are less exposed to the cookie dilemma. In fact, they are more personal and rarely shared.
Targeting techniques should also be ideally matched to content personalization. That way specific segments of users will be also not only reached by different ad messages but they will also experience different content when landing on the page. In a competitive online landscape, competitors are just a click away, hence a smooth and enticing user experience is essential. Ensuring the delivery of relevant content to match user expectation and impressing them positively plays a pivotal role in acquiring and retaining new consumers. Similar data could be used to carry out content targeting, such as demographic data, explicit preferences, analytics data, social graph, etc.
The opportunity given by targeting techniques and technologies should be carefully assessed by organization when choosing partners. The ability to collect comprehensive data points is key, however, the ability to create a unique vision of the interaction and meaning across those data points is paramount.
Intela has definitely the former, the latter depends on the close collaboration between the agency and the client, in order to fully understand campaign goals and strategize the execution through meaningful use of available data.
Post by: Filippo Gallignani, Online Properties and Innovation Director
