Very Good Read: Drake Morton

You Must Understand Your Markets

Wants and Needs,

“Then, Ask To Be Invited”

Behavioral Targeting Misses Mark

OCTOBER 7, 2009
Despite the concerns of some consumers and privacy advocates, marketers have defended behavioral targeting on the basis that Internet users would prefer to look at relevant advertisements and offers.

But a study from researchers at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of California Berkeley School of Law and the Annenberg Public Policy Center reports just the opposite.

“Contrary to what many marketers claim, most adult Americans (66%) do not want marketers to tailor advertisements to their interests,” according to the paper. “Moreover, when Americans are informed of three common ways that marketers gather data about people in order to tailor ads, even higher percentages— between 73% and 86%—say they would not want such advertising.” (more…)

Interesting Read: Drake Morton

Microsoft Links Behavioral Targeting

Across Web, Mobile, Xbox

eight-week campaign for mobile media can run between

$250,000 and $300,000

by Laurie Sullivan , Wednesday, September 23, 2009

I have mixed thoughts about being targeted ads on my mobile phone. While I’m the first to admit my love for technology, and that my AT&T BlackBerry goes wherever I do, I’m a little sensitive to ad targeting, especially when Neiman Marcus serves up an ad to me somewhere across the Web after I’ve abandoned the shopping cart on their site. (As far as I can tell, they seem to be the only retail store following me.) So, how would you feel if an ad for a store you frequented online was served up on your mobile phone browser?

Microsoft last week began offering behavioral targeting for ads running on its mobile network. But while the service offers a range of online targeted categories — about 100 –to advertisers buying mobile display inventory, the launch really means so much more.
(more…)

Time To Clean It Up: Drake Morton

Behavioral Targeting Creates Filter And Purge Technology Gap

by Laurie Sullivan , Wednesday, July 15, 2009

The lack of technology that sorts and stores the mounds of data collected from cookies and ad tags could contribute to the slow adoption of behavioral targeting, according to some advertising insiders.

The culprit becomes the terabytes of data from hundreds of thousands of ad impressions collecting geographic location, content on page, time of day, interaction with ads, frequency in which ads serve up, and more.
(more…)

This is a Must Read: Drake Morton

A Must-Read For BT Wonks

by Steve Smith , Friday, June 5, 2009

The academic studies of online privacy and the technologies behind data collection are coming on strong of late. I have been covering them here in recent months because as a former egghead (I say that lovingly) in the media studies field, I have seen this movie before. As legislators and regulators turn their eye towards a commercial endeavor, scholarly research and opinion that ordinarily gets shared among a relative handful of experts suddenly becomes widely cited, misquoted, turned into gospel.

Regulators need some semblance of impartial authority when diving into complex technical matters, and, frankly, academics need funding, which usually comes from government sources. The upshot is that people in the digital media industries may as well spend some time now hitting the scholarly books, because they will meet them in the legislative and FTC hearing rooms many of them will be attending in the coming years. (more…)

Good Read: Drake Morton

The Real Big Shift in TV and Online Video

by Simon McGrath, May 19, 2009

The debate continues on Video Insider and throughout the industry: When will there be a significant shift of ad dollars from television to online video?  Most recently, Eric Franchi’s “big shift” articles captured the attention of many readers and sparked a number of responses.  That’s a sure sign of a good article and a hot topic. But as some of you expressed in your comments, I think questions about if, when and how “the big shift” will occur lead us into the wrong debate.  Granted, the Internet has emerged as a major disruptive force for the advertising and publishing industries.  If you’re a masochist and follow “The Media is Dying” on Twitter you can get minute-by-minute updates on the latest publishing death spiral, mainly with print media outlets.

(more…)

Good Read: Drake Morton

Filtering Out The Noise

by Phil Leggiere , Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Search has often, and deservedly, been praised as the gold standard of online ad efficiency, the central repository of the world’s “database of intentions.” Yet the fact remains that most of the best intention-signaling consumer behavior occurs outside the search context.

(more…)

Keep In Mind!: Drake Morton

BT And Consumers: Transparency Crucial

To Gaining Trust 

by Phil Leggiere , Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Publishers and advertisers by now have internally devoted enormous investments in money, time and intellectual capital to behavioral targeting platforms. Yet when it comes to consumers themselves, most brands still like to pretend that behavioral targeting doesn’t exist, treating it like a secret vice to be locked away, hidden from the public that simply “can’t handle the truth.”

A study issued last week by Trust(e), an independent nonprofit online privacy advocacy organization, documents why that is precisely the wrong message for brands to be communicating. (more…)

Need to Understand: Drake Morton

Targeting For Value

by Phil Leggiere

ONE CLEAR SHIFT IN THE zeitgeist driven by economic strain and uncertainty is currently being referred to as “the flight to quality.”

As investors are forced to shift from trading to value investing in their stocks, so advertisers must seek ways of shifting from quantity to quality. This shift can manifest itself in numerous ways, including the eschewing of “me-too” ad networks with minimal or deficient targeting capabilities. It can, and increasingly will need to, include more intensely scrutinizing the blind spots in current display spending strategy and tactics, especially areas where behaviorally based targeting has been under-utilized, or entirely ignored up till now.

(more…)

Excellent Read: Drake Morton

Aspirational Behavior

by Phil Leggiere , Wednesday, December 31, 2008

WATCHING A BRAND STRUGGLE TO impose its “relevance” on a community of social media users is often akin to listening to a comic trying to explain his or her joke to an audience that doesn’t (or doesn’t want) to get it. Instead of organic connection and rapport, there’s only a strange disconnect. Truly leveraging the social and communicational power of social media, Jordan English Gross, COO of Saber Seven and co-founder of Dorthy.com, explains below, is less about brands targeting social communities to talk about themselves, and more about learning how consumers pursue their own dreams and aspirations online, and what role brands can play in helping them achieve them. (more…)

Basic Understanding of Your Market: You Need to Know: Drake Morton

From Static To Dynamic Behavioral

by Phil Leggiere , Wednesday, December 24, 2008

THOUGH WE’RE OFTEN CREATURES OF habit, we know human behavior is about a lot more than habit. In its essence, it’s about change and finding new ways of expressing needs and intentions. It should follow then that “targeting ” behavior should be creative and responsive to change as well. Ironically, however, behavioral targeting has been surprisingly slow to move from a static to more dynamic model, as Rodney Webster, senior product manager of Mediaplex, the technology division of ValueClick, explains. (more…)