Behavioural targeting
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Multi Media Developer at SportNetwork.net
14 October 2005 14:59pm
My website is part of the RealMedia UK network and RealMedia are banging on about behavioural targeting how it is going to be the 'next big thing' and how it will increase my average CPM rate dramatically.
It is about to come on stream at the end of this month, I am trying to get some opinions from some media planners/buyers on behavioural targeting from RealMedia...do you know about their offering..are you planning on using it etc.
Anyone else with an opinion on please shout up!
Cheers
John Wards
SportNetwork.net
CEO at Econsultancy
14 October 2005 15:21pm
Hi John
Funnily enough I've been chatting to a few people (media planner / buyers) about this recently. The very short summary of what I heard about the present state of behavioural targeting (in the UK) is "nice idea, will get there, not there yet."
The main problem is one of traffic volume. Without big volumes you obviously can't really make any sensible, useful or valuable inferences about behavioural segments. The sample sizes are just too small.
So what's happening is that media owners are buying up distressed inventory just to drive (any old) traffic to create the volume to try and create the data to support behavioural targeting. Which kind of defeats the point if you ask me because the profiles won't be properly reflective of the site.
What "behavioural targeting" therefore typically boils down to is targeting based on the content of the site. So if you have a site all about mortgages you can target people interested in mortgages by advertising on that site. Fair enough, but don't we have that already...?
I can't comment on RealMedia specifically but you should register to come to our free event on 10th November where various Ad Creation and Serving solution providers are presenting their wares, including 24/7 Real Media.
Ashley Friedlein
CEO
E-consultancy.com
On 14:59:57 14 October 2005 John Wards wrote:
Multi Media Developer at SportNetwork.net
14 October 2005 15:29pm
Hi Ashley,
Being in the wilds of County Durham we are 1) Scared of big citys ;-) 2) Don't get out much...so that rules out the event.
I will be interested in the response to RealMedias pitch however from what I hear OAS is losing more customers that its picking up..and their MD.
I have been told about the data issue before, it seems that realmedia would need to win lots an lots of planner/buyer clients to use OAS before it would benift their publisher network.
Cheers
John
CEO at Econsultancy
14 October 2005 15:45pm
Ah well... you can download their presentations after the event. If you register you'll get notified when those are ready even if you can't actually come.
While I have you... what are your views on the accuracy of Alexa to indicate site traffic levels? Might be sensitive for you to answer as according to Alexa your traffic has dropped off in the last 6 months. Would be interested to hear what your own site stats are saying.
We're working on a case study to compare ABCe audited site stats, with Alexa, with Hitiwise, with Nielsen panel data to see how they measure up - in theory the trends, if not the absolute values, should tally closely. We'll be running the case study on 2 sites - our own (small, B2B) and one very large B2C site (can't say who at the moment).
Ashley Friedlein
CEO
E-consultancy.com
Multi Media Developer at SportNetwork.net
14 October 2005 15:58pm
Our traffic is growing year on year (Doubled in 2 years, page views and users)
http://admin.sportnetwork.net/graph/net_stats_big.php (Subtract 2 million on the numbers as thats how many spider page impressions we do every month give or take a few 100,000)
I give up on Alexa really, in all honesty I have yet to see someone with their toolbar installed.
Comscore is about as bad.
Looking at Alexa they say our users do 2.2 page impressions on average.
Looking at September this year we did 7,946,582 page views and had 473,525 unqiue visitors (Urchin stats, cookie tracked)
Thats 16.8 pages per user....
CEO at Econsultancy
14 October 2005 16:14pm
Obviously Alexa is based on its toolbar data so it's certainly likely to be US-biased and probably biased towards techier people who install these things. Presumably if you compare similar sites then it should at least be consistently inaccurate across those sites..?
We've found its trending lines to correlate quite closely with our traffic levels - although out by a day because of the US time zone. The more traffic you have the more accurate it becomes. But I suspect we're in exactly the right niche of people most likely to have their toolbar.
Ashley
Director at iCompli Ltd.
17 October 2005 10:49am
Getting back to behavioural targeting!
We're just 'kicking-off' some surveys as part of a Chartered Institute of Marketing presentation that attempts to look at the 'privacy Bubble' as a key element of behavioural targeting.
We're attempting to engage marketers in an exercise about their own privacy bubble, before attending a discussion on how it impacts their campaigns. This should get them to think about issues like excessive data collection, tracking, mandatory registration and list segmentation on 'privacy types'. Should be fun!
Hoping to develop the idea that, although this concept has been around for some time, it can only become an increasingly important part of consumer targeting strategy as as awareness and 'fear' of intrusive monitoring grows. Just look at the US (land of loony laws - just kidding, don't want to get sued!) and you can see yet more irritatingly acronymed legislation eg SPY ACT, or Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act (HR29), sponsored by representative Mary Bono of California, is designed “to protect users of the internet from unknowing transmission of their personally identifiable information through spyware programs, and for other purposes” .
Politicians don't create legislation because it's fun; it has to mean something tp the majority of the electorate!
Realmedia doesn't reside on many PCs - it's too intrusive!
Duncan Smith
Founder iCompli Ltd.
www.icompli.co.uk
Head of Marketing at Castle Cover
15 February 2008 11:27am
Hi
We are an over 50's insurance company and I am looking to trial behavioural targeting to our somewhat "cynical" audience. I would like to trial this in conjunction with some geodemographic data, but am not too sure where to start, or what I need to be wary of?
Any help would be gratefully received!
Kerry Patton