Tags: B2B, B2C, behavioural targeting, Digital, google, segmentation, targeting
In the annals of marketing history, the segment has ruled supreme. Customer targeting has always been about knowing your demography from your elbow. We’ve been defining people by age, gender, region, socio-economic group and the rest for all eternity.
Well now there’s a new kid on the block, and it’s possibly a baddy (booo) but possibly an angel (ahhh). Behavioural targeting, or BT , simply says that we don’t care who you are but only what you do. I don’t mind if you’re a 54 year old woman living in Brighton and enjoying a five figure pension, or a 23 year old chap in Norwich with no money, if you buy Daz, then the chances are you’re a potential target for Persil. Written like that it sounds dubious but it does work in certain circumstances. It comes from the internet where targeting individuals with ads based on their behaviour is much easier than other media. Google of course has made a fortune by providing just this service for anyone with a website. You pay to have your ad on the right-hand side of the Google results. Perfect behavioural matching. You search for ‘cat food’ in Google and you get a right-hand side ad for cat food, but possibly also dog food, catteries and flea powder. That’s not poor targeting, that’s three lots of targeting going on simultaneously. Dog food manufacturers have worked out that cat owners are probably dog owners too.
Why did I say baddy earlier on? Well, BT is dependent on the advertiser knowing something about your online behaviour. And that means keeping data about me while I’m surfing so it all gets mixed up in the Data Protection Act, which says you can’t play fast and loose with people’s personal info without them giving the ok first.
And not only that, in the US of A, there’s even talk about this form of ad serving not being very effective at all: have a look at Econsultancy’s blog.
So, what’s important to know? 1. You now have the option to target your customers by segment or behaviour. 2. You’ll need to look at your product and your marketplace and test behavioural targeting to see if it works for you. 3. Behavioural targeting can be low cost and effective if it works for your combination of product/market/message.
But don’t take it from me, go and put cats into Google and give it a go.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Grant Pringle, Mark Kelleher. Mark Kelleher said: The new blog launches! Segments vs behavioural targeting
Seems to me it’s not BT vs segmentation, either/or. We need to do both – knowing that your customer searches for cat food is only the BT part of the story. Knowing that some cat food buyers also buy dog food comes from good old research and segmentation.
Mark,
Good blog! Interesting debate to be had on this I beleieve and ties in nicely with points made in the new book “My Digital Footprint” too.
My fear is how in the long term we can balance “targetting” and the value it brings to the consumer (when done well) versus “intrusion” and or “snooping”. As numerous cases have proven and companies like Spin Vox have recently tested, just what is, or is not, permissable under the Data Protection Act is a little vague – not at least because the technology develops so fast the orignal Act could never have covered, or even imagained, it all.
Greatings, blog.themarketer.co.uk – da best. Keep it going!
Garretot
Jo – yes agree that they’re both options, it’s not a direct choice between the two. But I’m not convinced that segmentation would show cat/dog food buyers together, whereas Google and other sophisticated search engines provide word grouping information that shows which words are being searched for by the people who search for e.g. cat food.