Behaviour Based Ad Targeting Gets Eminem Married
When I worked at a (World Top 10) Yellowpages business during the DotBomb period (2001-4), we were building out a range of search, display and classified properties online. One of the kewl thing's we did, thanks to Damien Healy (who loved adservers ;), was once Yellowpages.com.au users had searched (eg for 'toyota prius') we cookied them (or something similar), added some targeting smarts into the adserver (and code at the site level), and targeted "Toyota Prius" searchers with relevant (automotive) ads (display and contextual, usually display because higher CPM) that were also frequency capped across the 5-6 sites, so that the user didnt see/hear the ad too much (like Earthlink on Adam Curry's Podshow, please "frequency capping in podcasting already") When you think that these ads reached 65%+ of Aussie internet audience, and over 50% of the ads were semi-targeted because users had made a search on Yellowpages in the last month, and clickthrus were 2-5 times higher on average, that's a big tick for behaviourally targeted ads, like Takoda's network. (which when you think about it would be perfect in combining Jason Calacanis' targeted blogs in tech, auto etc with AOL's broad reach and ability to get on Fortune 500 advertiser schedlule)
Let's face it, if you have searched for a 'Toyota Prius' on a business directory website, 5 minutes later when you visit a sports website, you are still more likely than the average population to buy that (hollywood, neo-environmental yuck car) than someone who was reading about the latest ferrari or checking the sports results. Tacoda, which seems to be doing something similar is a company followed by many online ad-execs around the world, Fred. Which I'm sure is why Fred's holding the investment till someone realises it can quadruple CPM's and total ad yields.
With all these new 2.0 blog, rss, podcasting and the 1.0 search/contextual ad networks, some of the most basic/unsexy problems (targeting ads in untargeted environment) are not fully solved and companies like Tacoda have spent years solving. Imagine myspace, with more page views than google, could suddenly increase its yield by 4-5 or 10 times by proper targeting. AND/OR : There is a correction in the google P/E and many players going head to head for #1 + #2 position. This is important as many people think google's CPC text ads will solve every 21st century problem, which couldnt be more wrong. A VC : "As an investor in Tacoda for the past three years, I have been privy to many anecdotal examples of this and I have my own theories for why targeted ads perform better out of context. I think that if you are interested in cars, you are paying attention to what you are reading in the auto section and the car ads blend in. When you see them in the sports section, out of context, you pay more attention. Since behavioral technology targets the auto ad to people who have shown an interest in automotive content, showing them the ad in the sports section seems like a great way to get them to pay more attention to it."
Let's face it, if you have searched for a 'Toyota Prius' on a business directory website, 5 minutes later when you visit a sports website, you are still more likely than the average population to buy that (hollywood, neo-environmental yuck car) than someone who was reading about the latest ferrari or checking the sports results. Tacoda, which seems to be doing something similar is a company followed by many online ad-execs around the world, Fred. Which I'm sure is why Fred's holding the investment till someone realises it can quadruple CPM's and total ad yields.
With all these new 2.0 blog, rss, podcasting and the 1.0 search/contextual ad networks, some of the most basic/unsexy problems (targeting ads in untargeted environment) are not fully solved and companies like Tacoda have spent years solving. Imagine myspace, with more page views than google, could suddenly increase its yield by 4-5 or 10 times by proper targeting. AND/OR : There is a correction in the google P/E and many players going head to head for #1 + #2 position. This is important as many people think google's CPC text ads will solve every 21st century problem, which couldnt be more wrong. A VC : "As an investor in Tacoda for the past three years, I have been privy to many anecdotal examples of this and I have my own theories for why targeted ads perform better out of context. I think that if you are interested in cars, you are paying attention to what you are reading in the auto section and the car ads blend in. When you see them in the sports section, out of context, you pay more attention. Since behavioral technology targets the auto ad to people who have shown an interest in automotive content, showing them the ad in the sports section seems like a great way to get them to pay more attention to it."
posted by redbarren at 4:13 PM
<< Home