BT's Development
Tim Vanderhook, CEO of SpecificMEDIA, thinks that it’s effectiveness that will be responsible for BT’s growth in the near future. He predicts, “As more studies come out that support behavioral targeting as an effective way to reach an audience, we will start to answer the question of what is an effective frequency for a great product category and what behaviors should we be targeting for each advertiser.”
Most BT vendors agree that being able to spot really relevant links between advertisers and consumers is paramount to effectiveness and future success. Future effectiveness is going to rely more and more upon contextual relevance based on realistic patterns of consumer behavior. For example, if I’m tracked visiting an automotive website a single time it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m looking for a new car. However, if over time my search patterns reveal that I’m visiting a number of car sites or visiting the same site multiple times, then the odds that I’m looking for a new car increase.
BT vendors also need to approach the relationship with consumers with a level of finesse. While tracking a consumer can indicate intention or interest, consumers are still wary of unsolicited messaging no matter how topical. Many future marketers will need to learn how to inform consumers about behaviorally targeted offers without seeming like spies or by making the relationship seem forced.
There is also increased interest in getting a more complete picture of the consumer by drawing data from channels other than just online. Just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, the ability of a network to gain an accurate profile of site visitors is only going to be as effective as the data being collected. Because many home computers are used by more than one person, the accuracy wanes even further.
Getting a complete picture of a consumer’s actions may mean linking online behaviors with offline behaviors including television, radio and wireless. While the strategies for accomplishing this task are still being developed, changing technology is starting to drive all media toward the digital domain.
Once radio, television, online and wireless are all being made from the same digital ingredients, the ability to track behaviors across media increases dramatically. Marla Schimke, director of marketing at Revenue Science, agrees. “We’ve been very vocal about the fact that media is converging on internet protocol regardless of device. This enables behavioral targeting across different channels and makes it even more essential to the industry because behavioral targeting will be necessary to aggregate audiences across those devices.”
Nada Stirratt, Advertising.com’s senior vice president and general manager of advertising sales, cautions that “cross-channel behavioral tracking will continue to evolve relatively slowly so that it doesn’t exceed the level of acceptance by consumers. Although technology for wireless tracking may be available in the short term, we don’t see acceptance of this practice for behavioral targeting in the near future-- the mobile device is still too personal to the consumer.”
Most of the vendors I spoke with agreed that tracking behaviors across media channels is an idea whose time is yet to come. For Bill Day at WhenU, the real restrictions are based on privacy issues. “Our privacy protective technology is certainly transferable to other platforms beyond the computer desktop, but tracking people across platforms multiplies the potential for non-personally identifiable data to be connected to personally identifiable data. We will only do cross platform when we are assured these issues can be solved.”
