Newsletter - Double Ad Conversions with Behavioral Targeting
Performance Marketing Newsletter
May 2010
Double Ad Conversions with Behavioral Targeting
Dear Reader,
Welcome to Performance Marketing, the monthly newsletter for online
marketers looking for results.
Knowing where your prospects are, what sites they visit, and how they behave is paying off for online marketers. Behavioral targeting – and retargeting -- are hot because when you give consumers more relevant messaging and content, you get better results and make them more receptive to being shown advertising. According to a recent survey, behaviorally targeted ads yield twice the revenue and twice the conversions of untargeted ads.
Kelly Reilly, LSFinteractive Media Director, said, “Behavioral targeting extends your reach and is one of the best ways to use display to create cost efficiencies.” Read this issue for how to leverage behavioral targeting in your industry.
All the Best,
Daniel Laury
Founder, President and CEO
LSFinteractive
Feature Article: Double Ad Conversions with Behavioral Targeting
In today's fragmented media environment, behavioral targeting helps you zero in on your hottest prospects based on what they're doing, wherever they are. This tactic has never been more relevant than it is today.
What is behavioral targeting?
Behavioral targeting is a technique used by online advertisers to improve the effectiveness of their campaigns by increasing the relevance of product offers and promotions on a visitor-by-visitor basis.
Behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual's web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select and deliver online ads to the users who are most likely to be interested.
What’s the difference between behavioral targeting and retargeting?
Retargeting is a variation of behavioral targeting. It refers to reengaging a user who has been to your site but did not convert with ads that send him or her back to your site.
For instance, if someone went to a branded site looking for a particular camera or a vacation package but did not buy, that person will be shown ads featuring the same brand or even the same product on other sites and be exposed about six or seven times to the ad until a purchase is made.
Kelly Reilly, Media Director, said, "Retargeting is a way to capture the lowest hanging fruit -- people who have already demonstrated an interest in your product or brand – bringing them back in via cost effective display ads."
LSFinteractive's clients are using our retargeting technologies in which a website visitor is retargeted on other destinations with ads from the original website, sometimes even product-specific ads. Our retargeting techniques are delivering significantly higher conversion rates to most of our clients.
Why is the use of behavioral targeting and retargeting growing?
As the effective mixing and mining of audience data has become increasingly important to online advertisers, the role of behavioral targeting and retargeting have grown more central.
Early adopters of these techniques were e-commerce sites. Recently, companies outside the e-commerce space have started to use these techniques as well.
eMarketer estimates online advertisers in the U.S. will spend more than $1.1 billion on behaviorally targeted advertising. By 2014, spending will hit $2.6 billion. The estimate represents steady growth rates of about 20% from 2009 through 2014.
Why should I use behavioral targeting?
Behavioral targeting has become an attractive model for advertisers because of its proven effectiveness. These ads generate twice the conversions and twice the revenue.
According to The Network Advertising Initiative, behaviorally-targeted advertising in 2009 secured an average of 2.68 times as much revenue per ad as non-targeted "run of network" advertising.
The NAI’s recent study, called The Value of Behavioral Targeting, found that behaviorally targeted advertising is more than twice as effective at converting users who click on the ads into buyers (6.8% conversion vs. 2.8% for run-of-network ads).
How do I get started?
The typical approach to behavioral targeting starts by using web analytics to group visitors into discrete channels. Each channel is analyzed and a virtual profile is created to for each channel.
These profiles can be based around personas that give online advertisers a starting point to decide which content, navigation and layout to show to each persona and using specialized software to deliver the correct content.
Most platforms identify visitors by assigning a unique id cookie to each and every visitor to the site, allowing them to be tracked throughout their web journey.
An example is a user who visits content about auto insurance, clicks on an insurance advertiser button or banner, and then searches for “auto insurance.” This user would be assigned to the insurance prospect channel and the next time that user goes to Yahoo they will see ad for insurance..
Anything else?
Stick to the basics: discover purchase intent, introduce yourself with a targeted message, and continue to cultivate loyalty after you've engaged your new customer. And please don't forget: never collect personally identifiable information.
