Quit Fussing About Behavioral Targeting

Recently I was asked my opinion on this article by Jeff Einstein.

He attempts to slay the practice of behavioral targeting. He attacks the practice from a variety of angles. I find most of the those angles irrelevant.

1. Consumers don’t WANT to be served relevant ads.

Consumers don’t want to be served ads at all. They also want to free BMWs and houses made of ice cream. Stuff costs money. Free content, tools, and games costs ads. Starting with that as a given, and the choice of a relevant ad or an irrelevant ad, I’m confident that consumers prefer relevance.

2. The CTRs are low.

All clicks measure is a way to see how well you are effecting people open to engaging with your brand at that very moment. Not all advertising can make everyone you want to reach, jump out of their seat and act. You should aim for that and if you have a dollar and the choice between a tactic that will make everyone do that and behavioral targeting, choose the former. But once you spent all those dollars, and still want to change how people feel about your brand, BT is one of several tools in the box.

3. You risk breaking the law.

There is no law. There might one day be a law. When there is one we will follow it. Most of your deepest darkest secrets are bad targeting criteria. And using that data would probably be a moral and major PR problem, but not yet a legal one. Knowing whether or not someone might be in the market for snow tires doesn't require that kind of information.

BT is NOT Spam. We are taking ads people were going to see anyway and making them more relevant.

4. You drain budget

I doubt any advertising budget is higher or lower based on the existence and use of behavioral targeting. Perhaps digital budgets are. But digital budgets are dumb. Marketing budgets is where the allocation should begin. Put the money in the place where it makes the most sense. There are often better places (many better places) to put that money than in behavioral targeted banners, but your marketing teams should have strategic conversations around that, and wrestle with that on a day to day basis.

His last point does make sense

"Much better instead to reinvest your time and money in the fundamentals of a good message and better online destination experiences. Challenge your agency to explore and learn how -- in an on-demand media universe -- to let your audience target you."

With that I agree. At least I would if my business was building online destinations like his probably does. Objectively I'd invest in brand experiences wherever they may live, social networks, mobile phones, the middle of Times Square. But I digress...

A good message and awesome brand experiences are way more important than any of this nonsense. They need to well funded. But there are lots of territories to fill in a marketing plan, once your done creating awesome experiences, and all the people that can find you, find you. Sometimes you still have more product demand you need to drive.

As I've said on many occasions 200 million Americans are going to eat ketchup this month, you can build the best ketchup game in the history of the world, no more than 5% of them will play it and you got a lot more ketchup to sell.

If I Had a Hammer

Gary Vaynerchuk at FOWA Miami 09 from DamianVoltes.com on Vimeo.

Posted this comment in response to this video

Gary,

I think your totally blowing it when you (chastise) Cartier for buying a print ad or a TV spot. Are website ads, maintaining twitterfeeds, dropping Seismic comments unique and valuable? Absolutely. And they are underutilized. Definitely.

But TV, print, and all other media have a role to play. Whether its reaching more people in a specific period of time or associating a brand with a pop culture moment, or many other things

For example maybe Cartier sells 80% of its watches on 4 specific weekends. It could tolerate the inefficiency in targeting a print ad in SI for efficiently timing a message to half the men in this country with a glossy picture at the perfect time of year.

Maybe I'm Coke, and being part of the fabric of America is best articulated with entertaining everyone's family and friends while they are together during the Super Bowl.

Digital advocates say that if your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. I say even though you have all the tools, sometimes you use the new ones and sometimes you just need a fucking hammer.

Show Us the Money

TechCrunch published a chart showing the where that M&A and IPO
dollars are extremely low. IPO's at their lowest point since 1979.

And Boom Goes the Dynamite. To those working or running a business that depends on digital media dollars, time to start to making more money than you spend.

Think banner ads are the ship to take you there? What was the banner ad on the last page you were on?

Let's take the internet's targeting, measurability, dynamic content, broadband tubes, growth in time spent, and develop larger palettes for creative people to blow minds with. Might prevent you from ratcheting up traffic numbers that VC's and potential suitors drool over, but it'll show you the money. Ask Hulu.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Recession

Dow continues to plummet, the bank's wouldn't let you borrow a pen, budget's of all kinds are cut but you know what, there's upside to all of this.

Here are 3.

The ad industry luminaries are going to have to roll up there sleaves and do some real work. Everyday hard-working smart people hustle, think, and sweat to bring marketing campaigns to life through complex bureaucracies only to unfairly read some luminary (that hasn't executed anything in years) snipe at them from their blog for not living up to some myopic tactical ideal. Later for that. Job descriptions of "I go to conferences, blog and Twitter" are going bye-bye. Some will roll up their sleeves, serve their clients and push the industry forward with action rather than opinion. The others will go back into the family business, or start selling something. "I used to be the Mobile Evangelist for ZebraZoo, and I can tell you, your clients need to advertise on calling cards!" Enjoy kicking them out of your office.

New digital media opportunities will be made available. Anyone hear this before the burst bubble burst. "You will NEVER buy an ad on the front page of Yahoo". I did. Now, for a price, I can turn it into a carnival. I know many luminaries hate this because its "intrusive". And to that I would quote Hyman Roth


We're in advertising. Sometimes we have to intrude on people to sell our products. I understand all the benefits of conversation. Engagement is a growing piece of what we do, but sometimes people need to be interrupted to learn that people buying a Toyota will be saved by 0% APR's and Subway sandwiches has some excellent $5 footlong options. Its not sacrilege to embrace that side our business. So let's see digital opportunities that are little less small and out of the way and might actually disrupt and impact people.

We will finally stop having to play pattycake with Millenial employees. I know I'm not the only one to notice this latest round of kids out of school that have known nothing but growth and 15% annual raises and complaints about working late. (not the ones that work for me, those are the best millenials alive, no joke) I've been saying for a while, these other kids need a little recession to whack them in line and recognize that this is the time in their career to work their asses off, learn their craft, and be reliable. To them I quote Judge Smails.



So yes I've quoted Hyman Roth and Judge Smails. Not the most beloved characters of American Pop Culture. I've praised interruption and minimized conversation and engagement. You may think I am the oldest, orneriest 31 year old in the world. Read the rest of this blog, you'll see I understand the value of conversational marketing, giving high level opinions, and even youth culture. But momentum usually carries popular ideas past rationale ones. Alot of digital marketers need to understand the historically successful ways of marketing products and the younger generation needs someone old fashioned humble pie.

Maybe its somewhere in the middle of these high minded new ideals and an old school approach that will sell the most stuff for my clients. And if it takes a recession to realign the talented people that work in marketing to achieve more success and become more valuable to their employers and patrons, so be it. Hopefully it will make us all richer in the long run.

Long Live the Internet Music Marketplace (and Talkies)

Today I read a Times article, a TechCrunch post, and A VC's blog post about musicians their ability (or lack thereof) to monetize their content.

The VC blog post sums NYTimes article and Arrington. It's here:

A VC: Moving The Goalposts

I love music, I love bands, and I've treked far and wide to see musicians play and I've never stolen a song in my life.

That said, I don't care about musians getting paid. Not even a little. Business models change. I worry alot more about the American auto workers than musicians. There's a lot more of those guys, and if I can reconscile my dogmatic belief in the free market with screwing those guys over (as hard as it is), than musicians aren't a blip on the radar.

When movies became "talkies" the stars of American cinema that couldn't be compelling past their pretty face were out. This is no different. Tomorrow's musicians that can't make a living off of live touring, one to one outreach with fans, and merchandising are out. And that will lead to better music in very much the same way sound led to better movies.

What does that mean. More musicians touring and fighting harder for each fans. We'll probably see better talent in smaller clubs more frequently. Bands will put more effort in building a community out of their fan base and inspiring enough love amongst fans to get them to shell out real coin for collectables. Those making music to get laid and cash in will quit faster. Success in music will be more about the road than the destination, those giving it go in this marketplace will be pre-qualified when the end game isn't as rosy.

Yes, there will be less bloated rock stars selected by a king maker radio or studio exec's. And yes, there may be less money in it for artists. Maybe this new model will push some very solid bands to an unsustainable income, and they'll be lost forever. We will gain far more bands than we will lose with the democratization of audience access. I've spoken with some GREAT bands, that aren't rich by any standard. They've made their piece with it, they can get by. Its a shame, but its rock and roll and they like it. Maybe that's what makes them great.

Market forces inspire plenty of creativity. The great ones will find a way to get a good number of people to love them. Maybe that won't bring in enough money to "make it rain" but enough to keep doing what you love, and the great ones will still have it pretty good. Trust me.

And the meek shall inherit awareness

A great line in otherwise shill filled keynote today by David Carlick (Doubleclick founder/ investor). I could be mad, but he gave me this line to think about (and probably copy and take credit for) so job well done.

He was talking about how much harder it is to truly engage someone than buy a GRP at them. I interpret “harder” as expensive, time consuming and personally risky.

I think as a marketer you need to be honest about this. Each marketer needs to answer the question, “Do I want to impact tons of people a little bit (awareness), or a smaller number of perfect people a lot (engagement)”. If both, what’s more important? How do I spread my scarse resources (i.e. time, money) against these goals? This is going to vary from business to business.

But regardless of business once you make that choice I think there are some consistent best practices about how you allocate funds within the awareness and engagement filters.

Awareness = lots of media, lower investment in creative/ strategy/ and campaign stewardship.
Engagement = Creative/ Strategy/ Stewardship gets a lot more money and the media budget should shrink.

If you stick to an awareness based business model and try to generate engagement you’ll fail quickly. But if you stick with model you know and never fund engagement in a manner and scale that is logical you’ll fail slower.

And the meek shall inherit awareness and weaker brands.

Really, Apple. You can't get this together?

All the hipsters love Apple. I see them lined up outside the store in SoHo, this is how I know. Well, I tried to do something as hipster as it gets and Apple can't deliver

There's a song from a SWEDISH HIP HOP ARTIST, that I read about, ON A BLOG. I was going to DOWNLOAD IT ON MY IPOD from ITUNES, so I could listen to it on my way to work at AN AD AGENCY IN THE WEST VILLAGE.

They tell me I can't buy Swedish music. Thank g-d its not easy to steal music or else the music industry would be wasting precious opportunities. Wait... umm...