Internet Marketing

An interesting topic around buy-side optimization of Internet Media came up at OMMA. This is important for you marketers out there relying on your media companies to purchase your display media and targeted ads. I know, we need to leave it up to the experts. However, even the experts don't have all the information.

Behavioral targeting has been at best, bad. Typically I personally have never seen it work. We always try it going in, it sounds good. It sounds like it should work. But it usually doesn't. That may change and targeting may have a new name: Aggregate Knowledge.

Aggregate Knowledge is a service used by publishers to serve targeted content to viewers. Their new Audience Discovery Engine claims to map each impression against its own proprietary data plus additional third party data such as Hoovers to determine who the view actually is. The engine creates a score by which the engine then evaluates if the viewer is part of a target market. Essentially a percent of certainty which can be tailed by campaign. If the engine is 90% certain that the viewer is a male, Fortune 500 decision maker then it will sever the ad.

Real Time Modeling

Essentially AK has taken the approach most marketers take with their own database marketing for direct mail, email and other targeted media, except in real time fashion. Currently, marketers will take data from aggregate sources like Choicepoint and append the information to their own customer data they either generate, have as customers, or qualify from lists. Typically the customers are scored to the goal. It may be a purchase of a certain product or service, propensity to take an action, etc... I'm happy to see the evolution into real time scoring and now targeting of advertising.

Proof is in the online media optimization

Aggregate Knowledge claims to have increased targeted impressions by 162% and clicks on targeted media by 48%. That could be huge. There's more to see and learn. We'll keep an eye on this one. It could change the face of publishing and media buying on the internet.