Fetching Back Behavioral Targeting
By Elyse Tager, The ClickZ Network, Jun 11, 2008
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In
the science fiction movie, "Minority Report," Tom Cruise plays a police
officer forced to flee after he's falsely accused of a murder he has
yet to commit. At one point in the movie, Cruise's character walks
through a mall and is personally greeted by electronic billboards and
displays ads, like a Gap ad commenting about the shirts he last bought.
Let's see how behavioral targeting evolves from the seeds planted in
the present to the not-so-distant future.
To provide more insight into this topic, I caught up with Chad Little, chief retriever for FetchBack, a company that's developed innovative technology aimed at "retargeting" advertising and marketing toward consumers.
Elyse Tager: Explain in more detail about your patent-technology and how it can evolve behavioral targeting for the future.
Chad Little: FetchBack has developed technology from the
ground up by industry veterans who had developed several other
ad-serving solutions over the years. The idea was to combine our
knowledge of the industry, having developed several other ad-serving
solutions, and develop the ideal technology solution for delivering
retargeted ads. It's our vision that retargeting will become a
line-item budget for marketers. Advertisers will need the most robust
solution available to meet their CPA [define] objectives and at the same time allow the mom-and-pop shop to have access to this type of advertising.
The portion of the technology that will be most beneficial to marketing professionals is the comprehensive ROI [define] reports that can be generated. It allows them to track where every advertising penny is being spent over a given time period.
The heart of our technology is to simplify the process of
implementation so that everyone can use it and at the same time provide
more conversions for any given advertiser better than any other product
on the market, provide the most comprehensive analytics specific to
retargeting, and deliver the most conversions by delivering
substantially more reach than any competitive network.
Other than paid search and affiliate marketing, this is the only
form of advertising that can work for any advertiser, regardless of
size. We believe our technology and vision substantially evolves the
behavioral advertising marketplace, as other forms of [behavioral
targeting] will not work for everyone. Essentially, this is a way to
democratize behavioral retargeting and level the playing field.
ET: How can e-tail sites that fail their customers with their
recommendation functions refine them to better address what their
customers want?
CL: Well, this is not exactly where our expertise lies.
Ultimately, though, it boils down to data and learning how to interpret
that data. Categorized [behavioral targeting], retargeting, and
recommendation engines are all trying to give users more relevant
information that can ultimately enhance their experience online.
Criteo
is a company doing interesting things in the space. As they refine
their algorithms and expand the breadth of factors included in those
algorithms, recommendation engines will become more accurate in
predicting what actually is relevant to a customer. The more experience
a company has, the more data they have and the more accurate they can
be in their predictions.
A lot of things go on beyond the click, but who knows whether or not
the companies developing these engines are looking there. No doubt they
are getting more and more intelligent, though.
Watch for companies taking relevant recommendations outside their
Web site. It rained in Phoenix a couple weeks ago, and that day a
friend of mine got an e-mail from Amazon about a new pair of windshield
wipers. I told him he was a fool if he thought that was mere
coincidence.
ET: What is the current status of behavioral targeting
technology and its uses from an e-tail perspective, and how far can we
take targeting in the next generation?
CL: Behavioral targeting can be put into two segments:
categorized behavioral and retargeting. We believe that retargeting is
significant enough to have its own focus outside of categorized
behavioral targeting. We believe strongly that most e-tailers can
double the effectiveness of their current ad spends by retargeting
alone, with plenty of room to grow.
The only thing hindering this idea from skyrocketing is privacy
concerns. We collect absolutely no personally identifiable data, but
the subject is very much in the forefront of the media at the moment.
If this topic can be overcome and communicated, then we really are just
looking at the very beginning of the possibilities associated with
[behavioral targeting].
Future growth will come from a deeper understanding of what each
individual consumer is interested in on your site, something provided
by current [behavioral targeting] companies. And a greater
understanding of how they landed on your site will help to better
target individuals based on every single action taken to get to your
site.
We're seeing that retargeted impressions are having a big effect on
client traffic. This data goes far beyond the click though. We've
started looking at really granule data with regards to view-based
conversions. Banner ads have had a bad rap in the past, but look for
targeted banners to become a more valuable part of a marketing plan, as
the information we're seeing starts to surface. It's literally
industry-changing.
Another factor in the future success of [behavioral targeting] is
the creative content that your consumers will see. So much of online
advertising's focus has shifted to paid search; rich in text, lacking
in creativity. To date, display advertising has been relegated to the
few. Retargeting hopes to reintroduce the importance of creative online
advertising to marketers who have grown very accustomed to the
simplicity and ease of paid search. What becomes effective with
retargeting is the ability to dynamically select ads based on the
actions a visitor has taken on the Web site. It's already a challenge
for companies to get quality online creative. As interest increases in
targeted banner advertising, the problem is only going to become more
prevalent.
Better analytics will be needed to monitor performance that goes
well beyond clicks to paint a much more accurate picture of the effect
on the consumer; and these analytics need to be proactive!
ET: Do you expect the type of retargeting that you do can
translate well into the offline world, like being reminded of shirts
you bought at the Gap?
CL: We can see the beginnings of this happening with the
Amazon e-mail campaign in the example I gave earlier. Retargeting and
[behavioral targeting] will expand first to every other form of online
advertising. And as the Internet becomes the delivery mechanism for
other media, the line between online and offline will blur.
The key to making something like this work offline is the ability to
deliver messages that are timely and dynamic. The commercial printing
industry has been trying to make direct mail campaigns more relevant
for a while now. I could easily see an intelligent e-tailer taking the
customer data they gather on the Web and integrating that into not only
retargeting and e-mail campaigns but a variable-data direct mail piece
as well.
Based on what we can see from our data, we see an increase in total
conversion rates for our advertisers that are coming especially from
those who were simply exposed to the ad. There's no question that
retargeted ads influence purchasing behavior. Even if it's on a
subconscious level, it would just be a matter of tying together the
offline and online worlds that would be the tricky part.
