From SEM to CDM (Consumer Data Marketing): The Newest Layer of Targeting - Andy Monfried - MediaBizBloggers

Search marketing has been a staple in the interactive marketer's toolkit since the dawn of the industry; garnering significant attention and budget. Search marketing agencies optimize campaigns in order to meet certain backend metrics and ROI goals, and in doing so, both agencies and brand marketers have realized considerable success.

The search marketer's universe consists, for the most part, of keywords and advertising copy. Through bidding and manipulation of specific terms, search marketers can refine audiences (based on the implied intent of a given query) and serve highly targeted messages based subsequent search behavior.

This has been a very powerful layer of targeting for marketers.

Well, there is a new layer in town that promises to be as, if not more effective than search. When both methods are used in conjunction, you may just reach marketing nirvana.

As search agencies begin to see the tremendous opportunity in display advertising and are learning to further capitalize on their core competencies; they are extending their clients' marketing strategies beyond the search engine. Through this realization many search agencies will, if they have not already, deploy familiar tactics through new methods.

The Fine Line between Keyword Planning and the Data Planning

Search agencies optimize campaigns based on individual keywords. As more sophisticated methods are introduced into the world of display advertising, these same agencies are starting to look at optimizing display campaigns with powerful variables; such as consumer interests, influence, online actions, intent as well as the more standard consumer data points such as psychographics and demographics. In addition to the various data points used, campaigns based on custom audiences can be refined using factors such as recency and frequency of a given behavior. Knowing that a consumer performed an action is powerful; knowing that is was within a given timeframe is exponentially more powerful. An example of leveraging recency and frequency along with data targeting could be scenario like the following:

males, 18-24, that have shown an interest in movies and music, and have uploaded a comedy video 3 times in the last 72 hours.

As you can see, knowing the timeframe of the aforementioned activity adds an entirely new dimension.

What is Data Worth?

Bidding on keywords has become common place for the marketing world. Now, with the ability to bid on data points that are indicative of behavioral trends, a new world has been opened for search marketers. Until recently, there has been no effective way to associate a cost with a certain consumer attribute other than intent via search box. As data providers continue to emerge and offer new ways of mining insights and behaviors, so too will the ability to price those data points in an auction based model.

Is There Life Beyond Click?

The point has been made that there are new ways to message to the consumer; this fact begs the question, are there also new metrics to measure success? By incorporating consumer data points and behaviors into the equation, we can gauge metrics such as engagement, interactivity, and time spent with a given ad. We can (and should) continue to look at clicks, but now we attribute clicks to individual behaviors that contribute to an overall campaign, instead of only just analyzing click through. As an example, we may run a campaign for a line of clothing against the data points, "females, interested in fashion and shopping, have recently purchased clothes." We might learn that those females who are interested in fashion demonstrated a 1.2% CTR whereas all other shoppers demonstrated a 0.3% CTR. Correlative learnings like this, compounded with other data points is central to what CDM is all about. This type of thinking will allow marketing to optimize campaigns in a completely new way.

The thrust of the online advertising industry is more powerful than ever. That said, it is imperative that more marketers begin to look at the world through the lens of the SEM or CMD; purchasing audiences and not simply impressions. With this mode of thinking, companies will continue to be able look for ways to deploy initiatives in completely new environments. Like SEM, the methods may not need to change over time, but the data most certainly will; painting a more robust, customizable picture of the consumer.

Andy Monfried is the Founder and CEO of Lotame (www.lotame.com) a Maryland and New York-based company that improves the delivery and performance of online advertising by integrating anonymous social media activity data (such as blogging, uploading, posting and sharing) with intent, interest and demographic data in order to generate actionable marketing insights and zero-waste audience targeting.