The Right Data Results in a Value Exchange - Eric Bosco

The poet laureate of baseball Yogi Berra once said quotYou could observe a lot just by watchingquot To which I might add quotYou can learn a lot if you ask and listenquot This is precisely what we did in the planning stages for the launch of CRUNCH I asked online advertising and publishing executives about their world and tried to incorporate what I learned into our new newest offering aCustom Audience PlatformWhen asked what39s the top reasons you purchase digital display advertising I was pleased to see that the responses reflect the industry39s belief in display ad potentialGenerate salesamp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 424Drive traffic to branded siteamp160amp160amp160 333Acquire new prospects amp160 amp160 amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 333Create brand awareness amp160 amp160 amp160 212The primary goal of any advertising campaign should be to generate sales Even brand ads that are focused on building awareness and consideration should lead to more sales if they39re targeted to the right audience Acquiring new prospects presumes that you want to reach beyond your immediate and your known market to convince others to give your brand a try Gaining incremental reach can be expensive if you don39t know precisely where to go to get that next customerI then asked respondents to rank the online display placement methods in the order of most to least productive andfound that advertisers are intent on finding their targeted audience based on any and all kinds of user behaviorAudience targeting amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 935Contextual targetingamp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 871Retargetingamp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 amp160 amp160amp160amp160amp160 839Geographic targetingamp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 833Demographic targetingamp160amp160amp160amp160 807The big challenge with Audience targeting is that there is no industry definition of say a quotcar buyerquot You can purchase a segment of 25 million 39car intenders39 but roughly 10 million Americans bought a car last year so who is the other 15 million How do you know of the thousands of segments out there which ones are the right ones for your campaign Contextual targeting makes the leap of faith that you can deduce audience from context but in a world where more and more page views come from undifferentiated content it becomes harder and harder to make that leap of faith As far as retargeting we have been retargeting for 10 years making personalized recommendations on behalf of some big merchants and found it is very effective at getting existing customers to return to your brand but can39t help with finding new customers Finally it is no surprise that demographic targeting is dead last Demographic targets are not at all granular and are incredibly wasteful of impressionsOn to our next question In spite of the many objections to large interruptive ads the planners I questioned seemed to favor them when I asked what type of ad units do you think get above average results Takeover or interstitial pagesamp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 448API realtime dynamic unitsamp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 407Fixed banners any IAB sizeamp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 387Expand on mouseoveramp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 286Rich media including flash amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160amp160 276Preroll videoamp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 214Very interesting to see dynamic ads rank so high in spite of the quotcreepiness factorquot and preroll video rank so low and standard banners land pretty much in the middle Obviously creative execution is a huge factor to ad effectiveness However I think that getting ads in front of people receptive to them is the best way to maximize the results of an ad campaign regardless of ad unit typePerhaps the most telling response came to the question do you believe that you are not reaching highquality consumers with your display campaignMore than half 517 said NOKind of reminded me of the John Wanamaker claim that half of all advertising is a wasteWe are in the second decade of online advertising with persistent improvements in our knowledge of who is online and what their interests are yet half of our respondents remain skeptical that they39re reaching their target consumers Amazing In my view you can only improve the quality of your audience if you spend time getting to know them or in this case improve the quality of data about them It is not enough to know that someone read a story about autos to classify her as an quotauto intenderquot Advertisers and agencies need to take all other available data into account amp8211sequence of behavior other segments she belongs to properties of the inventory where the ad is delivered etc amp8211 the collection of which will reveal whether she is a good candidate for your adOnce you know something more definitive you can actually set up an Exchange of ValueAs Jeffrey F Rayport wrote on Technology Reviewcom quotWalk into a local Starbucks and you39re likely to feel flattered if a barista remembers your name and favorite beverage Something similar applies on the Web the more a service provider knows about you the greater the chance that you39ll like the servicequotThis is the essence of an ad platform that serves ads based on actual intent or purchases to show consumers that you39re committed to adding value to their online experience by showing them ads for products and services that they39re inclined to care aboutEric Bosco brings nearly 20 years of experience to the role of COO at ChoiceStream Eric most recently was Chief Product Officer at marketing data and services company comScore Prior to comScore Eric enjoyed a long and successful career at one of the worldamp8217s leading online companies AOL where he held senior roles at related advertising companies as SVP of Global Products and US Operations for AOLamp8217s PlatformA Advertisingcom and multiple roles at the parent company VP of Community and Communications Products and Senior Technical Director of AOLamp8217s iconic Instant Messaging product Eric can be reached at eboscochoicestreamcom

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