Let Your Audience Target You - Jaffer Ali -MediaBizBlogger

A quick review of recent articles concerning online marketing reveals that seven in ten deal with some form of targeting Behavioral targeting contextual targeting geotargeting demographic targetingyou name it there39s a targeted label for it This meme is so strong that media pioneer Jeff Einstein suggests we are more interested in targeting than we are in marketingSo is this article just more of the same Sort ofamp8230but with a twist Let me suggest that in an ondemand universe the time has come for advertisers and marketers to stop targeting their audiences and let their audiences target them instead But before we get to the pragmatic hows let39s askWHY should your audience target youFor starters it39s only logical When you deconstruct the search process you realize it39s the audience not the advertiser that39s doing the searching For that matter what difference does it make WHERE the search begins What39s important is where it ends up For example let39s say you39re Zappos and you39re looking to attract people searching for shoes Regardless of where they begin their search if they end up at Zappos they have in effect targeted you By letting your audience target you you allow common sense to prevail over the mountains of indecipherable data and specious behavioral algorithms that truth be told only serve to reveal precisely why you fail to engage and often repel your quottargetquot more than 99 of the time By letting your audience target you the advertising environment is transformed from one of contention to one of cooperation In Bernbachesque terms this engagement of the audience on its own terms creates the coveted and essential quotenvironment to buyquotBy letting your audience target you a more comfortable relationship ensues The pursuer becomes the pursued in a marketing mating dance where you encourage the audience to take the lead They come to you because they WANT to By letting your audience target you you invite them into your online home And on your home turf you dictate the damp233cor you decide what to serve you are the gracious host A 15 preroll or banner ad that is largely ignored simply can39t amp8211 and doesn39t amp8211 compareGiven the above the value in letting your audience target you would seem obvious Just as our founding fathers viewed the truth that quotall men are created equalquot to be selfevident they still saw the necessity to proclaim that truth in the Declaration of Independence I think they knew that selfevident truths are often anything but Let39s now move from the conceptual quotwhyquot of audience search a basic need to know to the pragmatic quothowquot that need can best be satisfied To begin a campaign whereby your audience targets you it is critical that you first understand exactly whom age gender sensibilities etc you want pursuing you It39s taken for granted that you know this and aren39t merely caught up in another selfevident truth Armed with the cogent information you must now lure your audience into your lair Romance them Seduce them Engage them Invite them in Do not fall prey to algorithmic erudition Do not be sweet talked by the quants Embrace instead a new language that articulates your schwerpunkt weight of effort or focus of intention one that communicates the essential dynamics of a healthy brandconsumer relationshipTo this end we39d all be welladvised to heed some very basic lessons learned in the golden ages of radio and television when content was king and advertisers controlled their own destinies This is exactly what we strive for with our own business model when we use proven content as the honey that attracts the bees We begin this process through strategic placement of thumbnail links to popular TV and movie clips across a broad spectrum of the more than 20000 websites in our video ad network Viewers who click on a thumbnail are transported to a paying advertiser39s website where an embedded video player launches the chosen clip the operative word is chosen In so doing we tap viewer predisposition on behalf of our advertisers and reverse the roles in the traditional quottargetingquot paradigm The hunter becomes the hunted The pursuer becomes the pursued The advertiser becomes the targetI cannot stress this enough It is not the website that is allimportant it is the search itself The search creates the selfselection process It identifies the hand raiser if you will With video the type of content determines and segments the audience A Liberace video clip will yield a different viewer than a Kanye West clip Through careful attention to the causal connections between 1 audience and content and 2 content and advertiser the process forges a genuine relationship between brand and consumer Research confirms that the audience doesn39t care WHERE they view the content The satisfaction is in the viewing so when the right content is offered and chosen and the viewing enjoyed on your site you39ve essentially welcomed a satisfied guest into your homeIf we ask better questions we39ll get better answers By inverting the targeting paradigm advertisers will be compelled to think differently and new relationships will flourish Creativity seduction and romance will once again grace the marketing lexicon as the pursuer becomes the pursued lovestruck by Media Cupid39s arrowAbout Jaffer AliJaffer Ali is CEO of Vidsense the Web39s largest video advertising network With more than 80000 advertiserfriendly video clips licensed from major film and TV studios the Vidsense network of more than 20000 safeforwork partner websites delivers millions of qualified visitors directly to advertiser websites on a pure PayPerClick PPC basis Vidsense is to Adsense what video is to print a far more engaging and compelling environment for consumers and advertisers alike

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