Online ad targeting is being successfully deployed in a variety of flavors: behavioral, contextual, demographic, daypart, to name but a few. One recent variation could be labeled "engagement targeting" and defined as the tactic of joining the online conversation with influential individuals on social media sites such as blogs and community networks, and using word of mouth and consumer-generated content to reach those people who self-target their interests.
Engagement targeting is not restricted to either direct response or branding goals. With online video advertising, which is typically used to boost a brand, 10 percent of viewers will forward the ad to friends or family. This subset of word-of-mouth marketing, which often goes by the infelicitous tag of "viral" marketing, often demands not information but entertainment to make the advertising relevant to the target audience.
In one well-publicized example of engagement targeting through video advertising, Chevrolet recently invited people to design their own online advertising videos for its Tahoe SUV model and then distribute them via email to their friends and family. One could say the marketing backfired on them, since many of the consumer-generated videos focused on how the enormous vehicle contributes to global warming and other planet-despoiling disasters, with statements such as "Don't buy me."
Some said that the Chevy Tahoe campaign is a poor example of effective engagement targeting, calling it "strategically flawed at birth." As Jackie Huba, co-author of "Creating Customer Evangelists," wrote on the Church of the Customer blog: "It's a textbook case of what happens when buzz for the sake of buzz is the primary objective. Here's why: This campaign was designed to encourage a mass audience to spread messages. It wasn't designed with loyal and evangelistic Tahoe owners in mind."
Most interestingly, a spokeswoman for Chevy told The New York Times that "the company did not plan to shut down the anti-SUV ads." In fact, she demonstrated a basic understanding of engagement targeting when she said, "We anticipated that there would be critical submissions. You do turn over your brand to the public, and we knew that we were going to get some bad with the good. But it's part of playing in this space."
Companies would be short-sighted to let the Chevy experience make them wary of engagement targeting. Instead, one lesson might be that less controversial products and services do better in this space. More so, offerings that have already received "good reviews" from citizen marketers-as the Church of the Customer blog calls them-are ripe for this method of targeted advertising. Furthermore, even with potentially divisive products or services, the marketer needs to engage not the general public but those self-targeted individuals who have already expressed some appreciation of the branded item.
In planning that engagement video campaign, it would not be surprising to hear that the Chevy Tahoe marketers saw last year's Capgemini study on automobile advertising and marketing. With high consideration, expensive goods such as cars, 66 percent of consumers said word of mouth is likely to be influential, more so than any other advertising or marketing method. Among auto manufacturers, a near universal 91 percent cited word of mouth as most influential.
David Hallerman is a senior analyst at eMarketer. This article is drawn from the recent eMarketer report, Online Ad Targeting: Engaging the Audience. eMarketer is the "first place to look" for market research information related to the internet, ebusiness, and online marketing. You can email eMarketer here.
