Targeted Display is Changing Advertising Strategies

In today’s world there are so many dif­fer­ent ways to adver­tise. Odds are if you are a small busi­ness you are well aware, due to the many solic­i­ta­tions from every web mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny under the sun. We wrote an arti­cle about the his­to­ry of adver­tis­ing in which we cov­ered some of the core ten­ants of adver­tis­ing. These things have not changed and con­tin­ue to remain essen­tial to any suc­cess­ful adver­tis­ing strat­e­gy. Tar­get­ed Dis­play adds a new lev­el of tar­get­ing to the right con­sumers at the right time with the right mes­sage. River­Town Mul­ti­me­dia offers many solu­tions if you have needs for dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing.

One thing that does change (and quite fre­quent­ly) is the medi­ums that you choose to tar­get your poten­tial cus­tomers. Years ago busi­ness­es bought “ban­ner ads” on web­sites in hopes of get­ting clicks, but the method­ol­o­gy was the same method­ol­o­gy as bill­board adver­tis­ing. You knew rough­ly how many peo­ple would come through and you would just hope that they saw your adver­tise­ment. In today’s world of big data we have so much data avail­able about con­sumers that we can tar­get ads to them in excit­ing new ways.

Let’s explore a few tar­get­ed dis­play techniques

Demographic / Behavioral Targeting.

With demo­graph­ic and behav­ioral tar­get­ed dis­play your ad will be deliv­ered to defined audi­ence seg­ments based on your mar­ket­ing goals. Tar­get­ing ads to peo­ple based on who they are and not what sites they vis­it elim­i­nate waste, cre­at­ing bet­ter results. With the data avail­able to you in your web­sites ana­lyt­ics and social insights you can gath­er a clear view of who your online audi­ence is. This data will help you fig­ure out who is most like­ly to engage with your mes­sages online. So a Demo­graph­ic tar­get­ed dis­play cam­paign might look like this:

A tar­get­ed dis­play cam­paign for a local gar­den cen­ter might tar­get women 35–54 with inter­est in gardening.

Site Retargeting

Site retar­get­ing is the prac­tice of dis­play­ing online ads to con­sumers who have vis­it­ed your web­site. These ads are dis­played across the whole inter­net on web­sites / apps that sell ads on their web­site. This is an effec­tive medi­um for many rea­sons, but the most sig­nif­i­cant is that the peo­ple see­ing your ads have already expressed an inter­est in your busi­ness. Here is an example.

Have you ever been shop­ping on ama­zon to leave the web­site with­out mak­ing a pur­chase only to find that you start see­ing ama­zon ads around the rest of the inter­net? Ama­zon knows you had an inter­est in that prod­uct and uses “site retar­get­ing” to remind you to come back and com­plete your purchase.

Search Retargeting

Search retar­get­ing is the prac­tice of show­ing ads to con­sumer based on what types of search­es they are per­form­ing. We leave dig­i­tal fin­ger­prints every­where we go and with every­thing we do online. Many com­pa­nies sell this con­sumer data to help mon­e­tize their web­sites. The anony­mous search­es per­formed on their web­site get sold to a data bro­ker which inturns sells access to it for an adver­tis­er to tar­get ads to con­sumers. This would look some­thing like this.

A online con­sumer is out research­ing a major pur­chase like a buy­ing their first home. They are search­ing on sites like tru­lia for new homes in a cer­tain area, they are search­ing on sites like about.com for first time home­buy­er tips, etc. That con­sumer has left dig­i­tal fin­ger­prints indi­cat­ing that they are like­ly in the mar­ket for a home pur­chase. Now when they start going to places across the rest of the inter­net, they may be served ads from local real­tors through a tar­get­ed dis­play campaign.

Contextual Retargeting

This form of tar­get­ed dis­play is deployed based on key­words that are with­in arti­cle that con­sumers are read­ing. Back to our pre­vi­ous para­graph, we leave dig­i­tal fin­ger­prints across the inter­net even with the types of infor­ma­tion we are con­sum­ing. These can be used as sig­nals of con­sumer intent as well. An exam­ple of some­thing like this would be.

Keep­ing with the new home pur­chase theme, an online con­sumer is read­ing blog posts and arti­cles about first time home pur­chas­es. Per­haps they read about first time home­buy­er loans or per­haps they are read­ing arti­cles about how to make a good offer on a home. They now have left dig­i­tal fin­ger­prints indi­cat­ing they are like­ly in the mar­ket for a home pur­chase and could start see­ing ads from a local realtor.

Last thoughts on targeted display

There are many more ways that tar­get­ed dis­play can tar­get con­sumers across the inter­net. Each busi­ness in today’s world needs to find a way to tar­get their poten­tial cus­tomers online. Tar­get­ed dis­play allows you to tar­get active and pas­sive con­sumers that are like­ly to con­vert to cus­tomers. By using tar­get­ed dis­play in busi­ness­es adver­tis­ing strate­gies, even a small busi­ness can lever­age the pow­er of big data.

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