Taking Targeted Advertising and Advertiser to Consumer Relationships to New Heights

August 11th, 2011, In Advertising, Search Marketing, Social Media, by Beverly Crandon

The business of targeted marketing is not a new one, but it is an evolving one and often times we find new tools or platforms that so transform the activity of sentiment based marketing that pundits continue to reach for other options, on where this will  go.  We at ad-ition strongly believe in making all digital communications, with users, as targeted as possible.  In today’s busy and hectic world, with everyone in a hurry, no one has time to waste and worse yet if it is being wasted by advertisers communicating in ways that do not resonate with me.  Nonetheless, this business of building relationships (friend to friend or more specifically here, advertiser to new consumer) is one that has spurred a lot of study.  Microsoft, has just invested in a research project being led by Jure Leskovec. The Leskovec study looks at the science of connections made on social networks and it very early on  attests to the fact that these relationships are not happenstance, but can be predicted.  This is the exact desired state for advertisers – to get to a point where based on a users behaviours, likes, dislikes, comments, friends, job, geography, digital communities and groups, one can anticipate their next step or their resulted sentiment towards something you put in front of them.  Imagine how successful, we as marketers, would be if that exact formula existed?  Well exploring this and many other aspects on the building of social relationships will be covered in Leskovec’s study.

Many have also commented on what studies such as Leskovec’s could mean to the future of advertising, such as Lauren Fisher.  Fisher goes so far as to say:

…it essentially takes out the element of choice by the user. Instead of allowing them to arrive more naturally and organically at the decision to try out your brand or product, you cut out this waiting time and get right in front of them straight away, pre-empting their decision to purchase. And of course, while you can’t physically force someone to purchase your product no matter how targeted your marketing is, the freedom of choice is largely removed.

I doubt (hope) we’ll get to the stage where absolute decision making power is lost, as it would remind me of a Ridley Scott futuristic film, which I always find all to predictable, but I do think studies such as Leskovec’s are fascinating, as they turn us on to smart means of communications and advertising.

In closing I strongly encourage you to review Leskovec’s article entitled : Supervised Random Walks, which is all about predicting link sharing and recommendation activity on social networks.  This will further provide insight into his thinking and the business of predicting advertising precision.

Header image courtesy of: FadderUri

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There was a while where the issue of online news property paywalls, consumed much of our blog posts and it was a trend triggered by Rupert Murdoch himself, when he rolled out his plan, publicly, to take all of his news titles to a pay for access format – a promise which has yet to be fulfilled.  Then the news of paywalls died down somewhat, until raised by the New York Times in the spring.  Regardless, many felt that given pained performance (Web traffic and revenues), the topic had been muted for most. So, it was to our surprise to see that The Onion was embarking on their own form of a paywall that will see international users of the site, pay to access more than five articles per month.

The Onion is a satirical online news site, which was originally founded in 1988 in print format and then taken to the Web in 1996.  It has operated in an open environment for all this time, so their wanting to move to a pay for content format is surprising.  Further, their reasoning’s for the move seems to follow a ‘the other kids are doing it so…’.

Our position on paywalls is now what it always was, publishers need to amass an audience of readers and work to monetize the audience through their adver tising platforms. It’s unfair to the reader to want to monetize their patronage and yet still charge them for it.

The road of a paywall is not an easy one, just ask Murdoch and even the New York Times, who has taken to launch a Living Social Deal for their titles to try to increase subscription revenues. It will be interesting to see how the Onion will adapt.

‘Mobile ROI’ And Why So Many Are Disconnected From What It Means

August 4th, 2011, In Advertising, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Media, Social Media, by Beverly Crandon

We’ve been chatting for years on the benefits of mobile and how smartphone adoption and mobile, will impact search and commerce moving forward. But even though the writing is on the wall, the number of business adopting market relevant mobile strategies, does not add up. The numbers of those dabbling in mobile appears lower or stagnant, at best.

In a new study by the Relevancy Group, the data points to an apparent low ROI being the reasons businesses have not ventured into or have pulled their dollars out of mobile campaigns to date.  The Relevancy Group numbers show that 43% of respondents said they won’t increase their mobile spend in 2011 because the ROI simply isn’t there, but that if it was, 93% of them would feel comfortable improving their spend.  The comment and viewpoints of these business owners and advertisers clearly contradicts the mobile behaviours of consumers that we know exist.  More and more, users are turning to their mobile devices to source information they were once had to be wired to find.  So then, why the disconnect?  To put it simply, advertisers are utilizing the mobile medium, without taking the consumer behaviours and life-cycle to thought.

Today, many believe that placing banner ads on mobile news apps qualifies as a well oiled mobile campaign and that given smartphone adoption rates, their mobile click-thrus should be through the roof, but that’s just not the case.  The more targeted your strategy so it fits to the advertising medium and your target demographic using that medium, the better.

Those interested in embarking on mobile strategies should be thinking about things that:

• Better blend the online world, with offline, given the use of mobile applications and campaigns
• How global positioning tools on smartphones can aid in the directory process, consumers embark on almost everyday, when trying to find retailers or restauranteurs
• How mobile devices can be used to allow patrons and consumers to make advanced mobile purchases
• Building recommendation agents that takes the user mobile GPS quadrants into consideration

In addition to changing the approach to mobile, the expected way to measure revenue and or return must change.  Businesses need to look at cost per registration, cost per download, etc… but make all of the measurable actions, actions that are specific to the world of mobile.

The above is the same issue many marketers faced with social media – they knew thy should be there, but did not know in what fashion.  In the beginning many dollars were wasted as folks tried divergent campaigns and wondered why they were not getting the following that they felt they should have.  The same goes for mobile.  If advertisers think in specific platform and mediums and create plans that fit the specificity required, mobile ROI would start to be a comparable partner to smartphone adoption and usage numbers we’er all wowed by, regularly.

Header image courtesy of: Ewan McIntosh

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