NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Is targeting a bad thing when everyone does it??
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Is targeting a bad thing when everyone does it??
Ali Partovi (apartovi_at_linkexchange.com)
Mon, 1 Jun 1998 13:08:56 -0700
I agree that "one man's treasure is another man's trash."
This means that you can sell different targeted segments to
different buyers. However, I don't think this addresses
Richard's original question.
The original question was this: when I purchase run-of-site
ad space, can I assume that I'll reach a representative
sample of that site's average users?
The answer is generally "No." You have to assume that the
site/network has sold certain targeted campaigns to other
advertisers, and what's left over is not the "average user,"
but a skew depending on which audiences those campaigns take
away.
DoubleClick's technology answer doesn't really address this
issue. Unless I missed something in Jame Byrne's
description, DoubleClick will ensure that a run-of-network
campaign is delivered at a steady rate, but they don't
ensure that it will reach a representative sample across all
users.
However, many sites have practical techniques to overcome
this issue. For example, DoubleClick points out that with
35 million unique users per month, it's unlikely for any
targeted campaign to significantly dent their run-of-network
demographics. LinkExchange, with 40 million unique users
per month, has the same answer to the issue.
WebRep's answer seems to be the best: compensate the
"cherry-picked" targeted campaigns with a house ad or other
ad to show the rest of the users, so that untargeted
campaigns are not impacted.
One point that's easy to overlook is, even if a site
provides content/context targeting (e.g., placement on a
specific area), that area may have a demographic
concentration different from the site average, and the rest
of the site/network may no longer be a perfect "base." At
LinkExchange, using our WebCensus demographic research with
Hambrecht and QUist, we track the traffic patterns for
different demographic groups across different areas of our
network's 250,000 web sites. For example, young men are
much more likely to be found on certain areas of particular
gaming and sports web sites (as you might expect!). This
means that selling these areas to one advertiser leaves the
rest of the network with an audience that has fewer young
men than the "network average." It's very difficult to
compensate for this effect.
Despite all this, there is great value in run-of-site
advertising. First, in many cases (e.g. DoubleClick, Yahoo,
LinkExchange), the network often has enough total
impressions and enough varied campaigns running to minimize
the impact of targeting on the remaining space. Second, you
can use run-of-site tests to determine what targeting
options produce the best results. Third, with run-of-site
ads you can reach a lot of people for an effective price,
and as Leo Sheiner pointed out, the content of your banner
is an effective way to self-select the respondents to be the
right audience.
Ali Partovi
<apartovi_at_linkexchange.com>
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