This post was originally published to the LinkedIn Group Digital Ad Technology Innovation, but seeing that Econsultancy's forums are quite active, I thought I'd put it here, too. Here it is...

Relationships can be defined as:
- A thin "relationship" between a brand/advertiser and its audience on a campaign consumption basis (simply, the audience has seen or has been exposed to a digital marketing comms initiative).

- A slightly richer "relationship" between a brand/advertiser and its audience where not only has the campaign been consumed i.e. seen by an audience, but there is also interaction and campaign destination visitation (no transacting just yet).

- And, as a simple 3rd example, a customer "relationship" between defined by the fact these multiple events: ad campaign consumption (seeing) and/or ad campaign interaction (clicking/viewing video/etc) and one or more subsequent customer transactions. In this last instance, the customer reached by an online display ad campaign could very well be a loyal, valuable, multi-year, multi-transaction or just a 1st time customer.

It is the last segment of campaign audience that interests me greatest.

It is this last segment that, I'm learning, is accounting for a greater share of online display ad campaign consumption today. Certainly when the advertiser is one of the UK's top 10 or 20.

But here's the kicker - what is the singluar messaging strategy for those online display campaigns?

Acquisition.

Why?

Because, despite the rise and rise of behavioural targeting and retargeting (via ad networks, exchanges, etc), it is simply NOT possible for a brand to communicate via its online display advertising, in a truly meaningful way, to existing relationships.

Today's [crude] methods to retarget [customers/prospects] based on 1x1 pixel data, which, at best, captures content consumption behaviour data, is still, at best, guesswork.

So, back to the question:

What % of ad impressions are you seeing consumed by existing relationships? (outside of any retargeting programmes in place).

James

PS. Reach out to me for a POV re: how internet display advertising is failing advertisers, their agencies, publishers and, broadly, the industry [partly] due to fundamental/structural "3rd party" ad management platform limitations plus the cottage industry of ad networks, ad exchanges and "demand side" platforms, which are all effectively built on top of the "3rd party" [data] construct, perpetuating the flow of valuable customer behaviour and other data out of advertisers' enterprises and into "3rd parties", which create an unnecessary cap on an extraordinary value opportunity.

No worries Matthew. The title can also read "What % of ad impressions are consumed by existing relationships"? Impressions = display advertising (which I should have also been clearer about as well).

That said, I’m actually quite keen to hear related paid search stories. The question [for you?] being “What % of paid search clicks [cost and/or business events] are mapped to existing relationships”?

The last detailed analysis I did for a [global] brand’s UK paid search programmes unveiled just over 50% of its paid search clicks, cost and subsequent transaction revenue were mapped to existing customers. We knew this because the client kindly passed to us, via a DoubleClick tracking tag, at the moment of each transaction, a TRUE or FALSE statement: if the customer transaction was new then TRUE, if the transaction was from existing customer then FALSE. Simple, but quite enlightening.

It’s not so simple with display advertising, hence my question.