Re: online targeting

From: Tim Lee <TLee_at_webcmo.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 15:41:16 -0600 (CST)

GEOFFREY.INNS_at_EXPRESS.CO.UK (GEOFFREY INNS) WROTE:
>Tim Lee's comments were interested about the optimal level
>of targeting. But by raising the level of targeting in his
>test, did he change the creative or use the same one? If my
>universe is all visitors to a car site but what I really
>want are exisiting Mercedes owners with a brake problem,
>assuming my targeting allows me to hit exactly whom I want I
>can show them a far more relevant message in the banner -
>and watch that CTR shoot up.
>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is unclear and I would be interested to hear; there is
no point using targeting without improving your creative
(plus of course changing where they end up on
click-through).

Geoffrey, in my last post, my focus was not about the
optimal level of targeting. Instead, my focus was about when
we make a targeting decision, we need to think about it
twice: is it worthwhile to purchase targeted banners?

In my last post, I used an experiment report from Infoseek
(not my test) to demonstrate that targeting may not generate
the result we expect and many times it even won't compensate
the cost of purchasing targeted banners.

One important lesson we have learnt from that report is that
ONE TO ONE TARGETING IS FAR LESS EFFECTIVE THAN WE THINK.
Unlike many other targeting mechanisms (We never know how
they work just like we never know how some research firms
make their online projections.), Infoseek uses state of the
art statistical technique--Neural Network to generate
targeting algorithms dynamically. If it doesn't work well,
you can hardly expect such one to one targeting works
somewhere else, because as a search engine, Infoseek has
more powerful information to make predictions.

There are two problems about online targeting: we expect too
much from online targeting and such targeting is too costly.
So we need to calculate: to target or not to target?

Best,

Tim Lee
Director of Research
http://www.WebCMO.com
A site dedicated to web marketing research.
WebCMO CyberAnalyzer--a "must have" and affordable marketing tool for your
web business.


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Received on Tue Jan 19 1999 - 16:38:36 CST