The rise of the social web has been one of the biggest paradigm shifts in the digital marketing industry. It has affected everything from the way we see the world to how we market to consumers both online and off. Human beings are, by construct, social creatures, so it was inevitable that our highest achievement in communication technology, the internet, would eventually reflect this side of our behavior.
Targeting has also been part of our industry's DNA. Whether it's associate, behavioral, contextual, demographic, etc., the essence of marketing has always been to get the right message to the right person at the right time. No other marketing channel has the true, one-on-one targeting capabilities as digital. By leveraging these technologies, advertisers have found positive lifts in campaign after campaign.
So the inevitable marriage of the social web and targeting has resulted in what's become known as social targeting. Offered by various vendors, social targeting technology tracks a specific group of users (for example, your core audience) and then attempts to identify the online connections of these users (i.e., your friends and family). Once these connections are uncovered, media can be targeted to them via the same anonymous pixel technology that is currently being used to target online display.
The thought process here is not hard to follow -- if you buy U2 tickets, there's a high chance that your friends might want to buy them too -- at least a better chance than anyone else off the street. It's this basic principle that has the industry buzzing about social targeting and the vendors trumpeting case studies showing performance lifts many times that of standard targeting methodologies. If you're a brand out there with lots of seemingly unmonetizeable social media fans, you might want to test to see if social targeting is for you.
Of course, you can't mention any kind of online targeting these days without triggering the privacy red flags. As a whole, internet users regard targeting as "creepy" and "invasive," and it stands to reason they would think doubly so about social targeting. It follows them off of the news and retail sites and to their personal profile pages. It seeks to understand who they're talking to and who they're sharing things with, which may seem to completely cross the line to some people.
Regardless of the privacy concerns, social targeting seems to be a viable option for advertisers. The goal of an ad campaign is to reach your target audience whether they're at a bus stop, a local newspaper, or an online ad impression. If social targeting can do the job well, it will be embraced and utilized.
Some of the companies engaged with social targeting include:
33Across
Top dog: Eric Wheeler, CEO
HQ: New York, N.Y.
Founded in: 2008
Product: SocialDNA
Homepage quote: "Build scalable audiences socially connected to your brand."
Notes: Listed among the OnMedia 100 Top Private Companies of 2010.
Quote: "33Across enables brands to build scalable audiences that are socially connected to the fans or shoppers of a brand. Our SocialDNA Targeting platform delivers dramatic ROI and deep social network/demographic insights." -- Eric Wheeler, CEO
Lotame
Top dog: Andy Monfried, founder and CEO
HQ: Maryland
Founded in: 2006
Tag line: Beyond Targeting
Product: LotameCC
Homepage quote: "Lotame leads the market in understanding, interpreting, and activating social data."
Notes: Opened an R&D office led by PhD, the first company to integrate with Knowledge Networks' Dimestore to optimize campaign performance in real-time towards brands objectives and success metrics beyond the click.
Quote: "Now, the web is social, and now there's an even richer set of data than ever before that marketers can tap into, including but not limited to age, gender, interests, actions, activities, and the like. We built Lotame and CrowdControl, our social operating system, from the ground up, and today CrowdControl collects and organizes over 2 billion daily behaviors from 73MM+ people online." -- Eric L. Porres, CMO
Media6Degrees
Top dog: Tom Phillips, president and CEO
HQ: New York, N.Y.
Founded in: 2007
Homepage quote: "We deliver scalable custom audiences to major marketers by utilizing the online connections of their consumers."
Notes: The company has partnerships with iCrossing and Havas Digital. It was included among the AlwaysOn Top 100 in 2008. The company also recently won The Design Science Award of the INFORMS Information Systems Society (ISS).
Quote: "Conventional means of targeting using context and demographics are becoming obsolete due to the flood of data generated online. We are at the forefront of harnessing this data to construct custom audiences that deliver meaningful results to marketers. Our technology builds upon a proven body of research from traditional direct marketing." -- Tom Phillips, president and CEO
Rapleaf
Top dog: Auren Hoffman, CEO
HQ: San Francisco, Calif.
Founded in: 2006
Tag line: Social CRM, Social Networking Data Append
Product: Rapleaf Spruce
Homepage quote: "Rapleaf provides social data about your customers. We help you boost relationships and drive conversions."
Notes: Partnerships with BlueKai, Exelate, Invite Media, and more
Quote: "Rapleaf enables advertisers to find people by demographics (like income, age, gender, etc.), interests and affinities (sports, politics, music, hobbies, brands, etc.), online influence, products, friends, and more. A typical campaign would be to target iPhone fans and their friends." -- Auren Hoffman, CEO
Josh Dreller is VP of media technology and analytics at Fuor Digital.
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