Flipping through the TV channels the other day, I happened to land on the movie "The Perfect Storm." It got me thinking about how publishers are facing more and more competitive pressure everyday and need to create their own perfect storm when it comes to behavioral targeting (BT).
In the movie three separate weather events -- a low-pressure system coming from one direction, a high-pressure system from another direction, and tropical moisture from a far-away hurricane -- that are individually not a huge threat become incredibly powerful when they come together.
Publishers must understand how to unite their elements -- consumers, data and inventory -- to create their own powerful combination in order to get the most revenue from their website and achieve significant results.
BT -- the low pressure system
Behavioral targeting is the infrastructure piece that gets things started.
To use BT effectively, publishers need to be able to identify who their loyal consumers are and which offers best resonate with them. The better these needs are met, the greater the chance that consumers will return to the site and new visitors will be drawn in. This requires tools that enable publishers to accurately measure the intentions and interests of site visitors over time, including metrics that measure site-specific marketing and sales patterns, as well as identify the factors that drive the conversion of site traffic from random visitors to paying customers.
By adding behavioral targeting technologies to their sites, publishers can create new ways to capture real user feedback in order to reflect how the business is really running, and identify why visitors are coming to the site as well as what they are doing during their visits and what they most seem interested in. Using these metrics, publishers can then define which visitor behaviors are driving the business forward and which are creating bottlenecks. In turn, the publishers are able to identify the impact that a site has on visitors, enabling them to measure the most direct path between site visitors and advertisers on that site.
Behavior syndication adds high pressure by putting good data into action
For publishers to be successful they must collect accurate visitor data and aggregate that data into definable segments for other use. With on-site targeting they may have a great site with loyal users, but they're only monetizing a small portion of their online activity. However, with behavior syndication they can take that behavioral data and maximize its value by allowing other publishers to leverage it for their campaigns. Every time an impression is served utilizing its data, every time a campaign delivers better advertising performance because of its audience -- the publisher makes money.
A network provides the tropical air
Publishers need to meet the needs of their advertisers to be successful. This means that an advertiser who buys 1,000,000 ad impressions during a month-long campaign expects those impressions to be served. Not doing so puts both the advertiser's marketing efforts and the relationship between the publisher and advertiser in jeopardy. However, the success of any campaign also depends on the right people seeing those ads and taking actions that lead to conversions.
Serving ad impressions just to meet impression numbers often means reaching visitors who have not expressed strong interest in the offer being presented. This approach doesn't generally meet the long-term needs of the advertiser.
However, there is a solution that works for both publishers and advertisers by serving behaviorally targeted ads through ad networks. In this way publishers are no longer restricted to the inventory they have on their own sites, but can instead push that inventory out through the ad network to reach targeted consumers across an array of sites. This means that impression numbers can be met while also increasing campaign results by getting the right ads in front of relevant consumers. The result is that the publisher's obligations are fulfilled, the needs of the advertiser are met, and by providing relevant content to the user, he also wins.
You can see how these three elements -- each powerful on its own -- become even more powerful in combination, helping publishers create a "perfect storm" of behavioral targeting opportunities critical to the lasting success of their websites.
Jeff Hirsch is chief revenue officer of Revenue Science.
