Category / Display Advertising
Why advertisers should warm up to Audience Targeting
Let me start off by sharing a short story of my grandmother’s pistachio cake! In the past when I would ask my grandma to bake me her special recipe and she was out of flour, I would go to the nearest supermarket, pick up a pack of flour, pay and leave. Shortly after, I would have my cake.
But last week when I craved the cake, I rushed down to the supermarket, found my way to the baking aisle and I wondered for 20 minutes figuring out what type of flour should I buy! It wasn’t an easy decision for a non-baker, different packages, brands, nutrient values, prices… I was confused, frustrated and yet long way to satisfying my sweet tooth!
Generating Awareness at the Right Time and Place
A computer manufacturer came to us at the beginning of the year with a clear mandate: help boost awareness of a new line of computers amongst the Canadian business community. “No problem,” we said as we dug into our toolbox and presented contextual sites and our exclusive data that reaches Canadians with a high intent to purchase business-related products. The strategy presented was met with a lukewarm reaction – we hadn’t hit a homerun with this targeted approach. The advertiser was pleased with how our recommendation could increase sales by reaching specific business-decision makers, but – they reminded us, that wasn’t the objective of the campaign. Instead, the objective of the campaign was to generate awareness amongst the whole Canadian business community so that their potential pool of consumers could grow.
The Power of Marrying Location + Intent to Reach Potential Customers
Case Study: Real Estate The Challenge Late last year, a frantic account manager came to my desk looking for a solution to a challenge facing his client, a major real estate developer in the Montreal region who was building a major new condominium complex within a nearby affluent suburb. Unfortunately for this developer, 6 condo units remained unsold despite the fast approaching launch date. Understanding the ability to drive conversions from well-designed web forms, the account manager thus proposed that our creative services team and usability experts build a webpage wherein potential buyers could research the new property and subsequently submit their contact details for more information. I was on board – what the condo developer needed was an acquisition strategy and, if anything, this user-friendly web form could help him aggregate a list of potential buyers. However, there was one significant issue: though we could build the pool, how would we bring the horse(s) to water? That is, how would we be able to pinpoint people who were in-market for new housing within the relatively small community of 70K [...]
Firefox blocks Cookies – How does this affect Advertisers?
Firefox’s recent press release on blocking the cookies triggered a lot of conversation amongst data advertising advocates. A lot of data advertising scholars started questioning how this initiation would impact audience targeting. A number of them got concerned if other browsers would go down the same road. A few started exploring a non-cookie targeting techniques. And everyone was exploring various ways to measure its impact on their business.
Although (today!) the entire idea of data advertising and audience targeting is shaped around collections of cookies, and therefore the latest Firefox’s announcement could be a huge hurdle along the way, there are several key factors that need to be understood before coming to conclusion that ‘data advertising is coming to an end!!’. Which is not even close.
Big Data 101 and the Impact on Digital Media Planning
Big Data! Such a promising nirvana with no universal definition of what it means. The killer buzz word comes with a lot of ambiguity that has caused marketing professionals to use it without knowing what it actually is. Sometimes we are all so drawn by the hype that it doesn’t look ‘cool’ to go back and question how the concept got started.
The good news is, unlike its name, Big Data is not rocket science and you don’t need to be a math geek to crack the code! Advertising has always been about ideas and creativity. Going back to the Mad Men era, no matter how much Don or Peggy believed in their ideas, there was no way to prove a proposal would rock the client’s business. However, today creative people in the advertising industry can use big data to support their media planning ideas by ensuring the right audience is being targeted.