At a one-day conference on behavioral targeting in San Francisco two weeks ago, the major themes were privacy, Web 2.0, privacy, predictive modeling. And did I mention privacy? I’m a huge fan of behavioral targeting especially since it’s becoming more and more sophisticated. And we have previously examined predictive modeling techniques used by Valueclick, aCerno, and Epic Advertising — each adopting very different methodologies to serve up highly targeted ads to the right audiences. AdBrite, another ad network, has now just announced it’s throwing its hat in the behavioral targeting ring. At the conference, some of the interesting discussion topics, both on the panels and in the halls, were: Behavioral Targeting for TV Ads? The Internet will morph with the TV to create one large media delivery vehicle in the next 15 years as standards and technology evolves. Will there be the option of doing behavioral targeting with TV placements and will the public allow it? The Creepy Factor. “Things are only going to get creepier,” was a common remark heard at the conference. Many vendors struggled with increasing the sophistication of their applications and technology versus “creeping people out” with the implication of additional perceived intrusion into their privacy. If the objective of behavioral targeting is to serve up only the kinds of ads that the consumer would be interested in seeing, then we need to know more about, if not the consumer, then the cookie that represents that view. The two concepts seem to be counter productive, but the balance will be achieved with better education of consumers and more refined technology. Data Portability (two words) vs. Dataportability(one word). The former is defined as the option to use your personal data between trusted applications and vendors. The latter is a fairly new organization, the DataPortability Project. It is a group created to promote the idea that individuals have control over their data by determining how they can use it and who can use it. This includes access to data under the control of another entity. The project’s stated mission is to consult, design, educate, and advocate interoperable data portability to users, developers, and vendors. Do check this group out and its Web site, which contains lots of valuable content. I know I’ll be following them. Privacy. The most interesting, and contentious panel focused on privacy. Speakers included several lawyers, an AlmondNet executive, and a representative from TrustE. The lawyers for the most part, sided with the consumer to the extreme — any possible invasion of privacy — even if just perceived, is unacceptable. The industry, critics contended, is clearly not doing an adequate job of policing itself, and needs third-party regulation. The conversation was quite heated. It was exciting to have participants from outside the marketing industry throwing cold water on those of us within it. We get so wrapped up in the nuances of what we are doing that the outside view is sometimes a shock. I was very impressed with the overall concern regarding privacy exhibited by all of the major behavioral targeting vendors including Acxiom, Revenue Science, AOL Platform A’s Tacoda, Tribal Fusion, ValueClick, and others. Their excellent contribution on panels around this issue, coupled with their participation or leadership on privacy committees or organizations (the Interactive Advertising Bureau and others) may be prompted by self-preservation but is certainly well intentioned and very well informed. I will continue to watch the vendors utilizing predictive modeling. Having grown up in the direct response industry, where predictive modeling was born and still rules many prospecting efforts, I can’t wait to see how that expertise will translate to online marketing and how the consumer will continue to respond to this. We have been doing a monthly column with ClickZ on Behavioral Targeting for several months. OMMA (Mediapost) had a one day conference on the topic in SF yesterday which really was excellent. Major themes were privacy, Web 2.0, privacy, predictive modeling and did I mention privacy? I’m actually a huge fan of BT especially as it is becoming more and more sophisticated. We have written previously about the predictive modeling techniques being used by ValueClick, ACerno and Epic Advertising - three companies using very different methodologies to serve up highly targeted ads to the right audiences. AdBrite, another ad network, has now just annouced that they are throwing their hat in the BT ring. But the panel that was the most interesting, and contentious, yesterday was the one on privacy. the panel consisted of several lawyers, a VP from AlmondNet, a fellow from TrustE. The lawyers for the most part, sided with the consumer to the extreme - any possible invasion of privacy - even if just perceived, was unacceptable. The industry is clearly not doing an adequate job of policing itself, and needs 3rd party regulation. The conversation was quite heated - exciting actually to have participants from outside the industry throwing cold water on those of us in it. My bet is still with the predictive modeling vendors. Having grown up in the direct response industry, where predictive modeling was born and still rules many prospecting efforts, I can’t wait to see how that level of expertise translated to online. I love LinkedIn. And I’ve been watching it grow in breadth and depth - lots of new apps and sophistication and members in the last 6 mos or so. They just raised another round of capital, and I can’t wait to see what they will do with it. Steve Patrizi, their director of ad sales will be speaking at the Morning Forum on Web 2.0 that we are producing in conjunction with the SVAMA. Here are the details if you are interested in attending: The June meeting: The Business Side of Social Networking Social media is booming in the business world and is changing the way that professionals manage their own brand, discover business solutions and opportunities, and find and recruit employees. Learn how to use this emerging platform to optimize your own professional success and to help your company reach and connect with affluent and influential business people.
Steve Patrizi, Director of Advertising Sales, LinkedIn Steve runs advertising sales and operations for LinkedIn. Prior to joining LinkedIn in September of 2007, Steve managed advertising sales teams at Microsoft’s MSN division and held various sales management positions at the print and online editions of The Wall Street Journal. June 25th, 8:30am-10am Scott’s Seafood Restaurant and Grill 855 El Camino Real Town and Country Shopping Center (Embarcadero and El Camino) Palo Alto, CA 94301 / (650) 323-1555 Cost: Currently $5 to SVAMA members, $15 for non-members
Click here to register.
My husband will say, when he has geeked out too much and spent too much time in front of his laptop, that he needs wetwear - real live people, frequently our kids will fill the bill. This started when they were infants and wet in more ways than one, usually. I’m beginning to feel that I need a more major dose of wetwear daily. As I spend more and more time tending to business online, keeping up with Social Networks and Twitter and all the rest, and checking my crackberry through out the day and night. It wears! Have you found Beach Walks with Rox yet? It’s a daily vcast offering “a little bit of Aloha daily”. Very soothing. But as low key as she seems, she is totally plugged in to all that is Web 2.0 and is very smart cookie. She has a great post on keeping your personality, and even having more if it. I’m all for that especially in the business setting. As I get older, I have less and less patience with performing to some standard other than my own at that moment. Age does have it’s benefits.
I’m now seeking input on the best way or apps for aggregating posting on all of my Social Networks - its taking way too much time to do it individualy. I’d welcome any and all suggestion. Currently I’m looking at Friendfeed and Ping.fm. any feedback on either? And Twitter is driving me nuts…but I’m not alone. Many tweets and blog posts are referencing the many ups and downs of the Twitter servers. Clearly they have maxed out their capacity. For those of us who have been frenzied,(well ok challenged is bit more sedate) at the daunting task of staying on top of the many blogs and social networks that are of interest, I have glimpsed a solution. I just had the most amazing demo of a new program/web app from eCairn today from the CEO Dominique Lahaix As I look through the verbiage on their site, it really doesn’t do justice to what they are all about. They are currently in, if not stealth, then beta mode, and are completing modules and build-outs at a rapid clip, so the marketing copy is not keeping up. Their application falls into 2 camps “Conversation” application - Makes it easy for an individual or group to identify, track, learn and engage communities. The user driven menu allows for easy blog search, blog monitoring and clipping capabilities to build a bloglist for any purpose - or multiple purposes, from personal to Marketing/Enterprise driven objectives. It would be take time but the user could easily compile a list of several hundred blogs using this program. Ecairn will also provide back end solutions to compile a blog list in the thousands of blogs. The list is organized so that recent posts, filtering, linking to the blog for a comment, and then coming back to eCairm to annotate the action. Reporting capabilities are (or will be) available to note what actions were taken where and when. The abiltiy to link to social networks along with the blogs, and seemlessly shift between the two without losing track of the process if fantastic. A starred list can be used to monitor the most favorite or trafficked blogs. The second application is for advertising in the blogosphere and Social networks. A similar list can be compiled of blogs, feeds and SN’s that accept advertising - with the ability to view rankings, rates and make comparisons. I’m not sure if you can place ads from within the application, but it seemed like you could do everything else. I’m excited as a media agency owner helping our clients map out Web 2.0 strategies, and as a Web 2.0 junkie. There’s hope! “It’s the data, stupid”, might well be the mantra of the direct response industry. Or a corollary “database segmentation and analysis is the key to ROI”. Much of the analytical methodology and discipline is now popping up with a variety of BT products and solutions. I spent quite a bit of time talking to a variety of Ad Networks, publishers and other suppliers around what’s new in BT during Ad-Tech in San Francisco in April. I may sound like a broken record, but I continue to be astounded at how much the methodology behind many of the new targeting solutions are firmly based in direct marketing, data-driven practices now moving in to the online space. Utilizing techniques of working with anticipated click streams to predict future behavior, as opposed to merely measuring past behavior, the level of sophistication is rising. Good news for the advertiser! I met with Don Mathis, president of Epic Advertising (previously known as Azoogle, plus an acquisition or two) to discuss how they have using BT and some upcoming changes. Epic Advertising now encompasses two main units focused on online consumer traffic acquisition: AzoogleAds and Bazaar Advertising. AzoogleAds continues to provide broad-based traffic acquisition services leveraging the company’s leading performance-based ad network business. Bazaar Advertising continues to provide search engine management and marketing services, specializing in keyword discovery, purchase and optimization of online search campaigns. While the company had previously offered a robust, classic BT solution to it’s advertisers, just this week, they are announcing the official launch of Performance CPM (pCPM), a patent-pending metric that allows advertisers to track performance-marketing campaigns by measuring “induced visits.” Advertisers can now determine campaign effectiveness utilizing a new, more comprehensive approach and gives a new definition to the concept of “behavioral”. Current contextual ad targeting can vary based on the content on each page, as well as categories set by publishers. Visitors will see the different ads on different content pages. Several problems that Collarity’s behavioral platform addresses are that it applies to every visitor anonymously, without tagging them. It dynamically targets ads, based on evolving content and interests. Each visitor sees different ads as they click around and are “joined to” communities of interest. Much higher consumption and satisfaction for visitors, with ads that seem more relevant. A bit more detail: They optimize text, banner and video ads, relying on ad inventories and feeds used by a publisher. They can deliver the most relevant ads, which typically doubles consumption of ads. Ad buyers can see these dynamic profiles from publishers The common theme between the two companies is the ability to tap into the nuances of intuited or induced behavior to predict future performance. As we as an industry become more expert and rigorous in our technological capabilities, we all will benefit with far more relevant ads, less ad budget waste and happier end users. What’s not to like?
While I am madly updating our blog roll, I wanted to call out blogs in the Web 2.0 area that I think are worth the daily/weekly read. That is, so far. This list grows exponentially each month and it’s difficult to keep a lid on it for my own sanity. That said, below are current faves in the business arena. I won’t bore you with my food blog addiction - we can have that conversation another time, just email me. In all cases, I suggest you subcribe to their RSS feeds, to make the perusing more efficient. Web Strategy by Jeremiah Jeremiah has been in the Web 2.0 space for forever and has experienced and explored it from many different angles. His intelligent coverage is excellent. Marketing in a Web 2.0 World LaSandra is an active participant in the Web 2.0 community - speaking, contributing, commenting, twittering. Worth following! TechCrunch A classic. Go there daily Adrants another classic - more on gen’l online marketing, but lots lately on 2.0 DishyMix blog This podcast is an ongoing education on the quickly evolving online and web 2.0 space. The blog is a back up to the Dishymix podcast series. Intelligent, always cutting edge, worthy of a weekly listen and view. Subscribe now! Let me know what your favorites are. There is so much terrific content out there in the blogosphere that it’s easy to miss gems.
I’m still exhausted from all that is Ad-Tech. Very disappointed with most of the keynote presentations - too broad, too generic. Much of the talk through out the show was on Web 2.0 and 3.0 and social networking and CGM in general. Two of the sessions that I attended were outstanding. Marketing with Downloadable Media: Podcasts and Vidcasts - Buy Ads in Existing Content or Make Your Own Show? was a terrific overview of the podcasting, vcasting and other downloadable media landscape. Moderated by Chris MacDonald (of LibSyn), and the panelists were Jim Louderback (Revision3), Kin Robles (National Podcasting System), Mark McRery (Podtrac), Roxanne Darling (Beach Walks with Roz). If you are just getting your feet wet in this new medium, check out these folks and their companies for a good cross section of the players in this arena. Making Widgets and Gadgets Work for You was both a great overview (what’s a widget and how does it differ from a gadget etc) but strategic and tactical at the same time. I really walked away with a great sense of the importance of widgets in the overall scheme of things, and why, and where to start. Also kudos to whoever pulled together the panel (the moderator Jerimiah Owyang, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research probably) for combining the analytical side with Jane Felice of comScore, Ed Davis VP product development for major publisher ESPN, Ed Schoen product dev with Facebook, and the Hooman Radfar (CEO of Clearspring - makers and distributors of widgets). (Jump to the Ad-tech website to get bios of these people). I loved that the moderator was taking comments and questions from Twitter real-time. Very cool.
Two BT related products have recently appeared on my radar – one just launching this month, the other has been around since 2004, but in stealth mode, and is coming to market formally now. US-based online marketing company ValueClick Media will launch a platform in the summer offering advertisers behavioral targeting based on predictive analytics, according to a presentation it made at Hollywood OMMA on March 18. Once again my direct response antennae were raised having spent years in predictive modeling strategies for circulation plans with traditional catalog clients. I wondered if that concept had morphed into the online world, and if so, how.
I called Tony Winders, the VP of Marketing for ValueClick Media to get a better understanding of their new offer. Tony was a tad cagey (delightful, but cagey), since they have not officially launched yet, but was able to give me a bit more detail about the beta. The conversation also touched on privacy issues (of course), the consumer’s lack of understanding of cookies, the need for guidelines and on and on. We had a lot to talk about. Until now, BT methodologies have fallen into one of three flavors: retargeting, clusters, or custom business rules. Retargeting is the most effective form of BT because it targets individuals who have already interacted with a brand. Clusters assign each visitor to only one group and custom business rules give a high degree of control to marketers, but both rely on human interpretation of data to determine how a visitor will be classified. ValueClick Media hopes to popularize a new, predictive approach to BT by allowing its technology to automatically determine to what category each visitor belongs. ValueClick Medias’ algorithm takes into consideration the observed behavior of visitors and creates predictive models for future behavior – all based on attributes provided by anonymous cookie data, not personally identifiable information. The resulting profile data defines each visitor as belonging to one or more categories (mobile, finance, retail/shopper, travel/air, etc.) ValueClick Media can then leverage their extensive inventory (over 130 million unique visitors per month) to give advertisers large scale potential per category – something a smaller ad network would not be able to supply. Another product, called ACerno, has been in stealth mode for almost 4 years. The concept borrows heavily from the blind Cooperative databases that catalogers have been using for over a decade. In fact, ACerno is a wholly owned subsidiary of i-Behavior, one of the major coops. aCerno collects anonymous information from an association of more than 375 major online multi-channel retail web sites that are not identified to each other, representing 140 million shoppers,. The information is completely private and only tagged with an ID, with no cross-reference to personal information. aCerno compiles this anonymous data using cookies. aCerno’s analytics provide two exclusive tracks of predictive information: · Who the customers are – knowing what a person shops for correlates strongly to who they are; e.g., someone who buys a dress and a crib is almost certainly a woman with a baby · What customers will buy next – large populations with similar patterns of purchase behavior can be discovered and sold aCerno clients’ best prospects are identified with modeling and profiling techniques, finding users that look most similar to their best customers. Once these high-value prospects are recognized, aCerno uses its massive advertising network to deliver targeted advertising messages directly to them, creating brand consideration or incremental transactions, which can be purchased on a CPA basis aCerno’s extensive network of high-quality websites, web publishers and portals is targeted exclusively at the cookie level with banner ads and rich media to achieve maximum reach against the target audience. The network reaches over 95% of the Internet population with 80+% of the impressions being served into sites on the ComScore Top 500. This is predictive analysis – scoring million of cookies against hundreds of variables to create models. The concept was so successful to catalog mailers that it became the vast majority of their prospecting efforts and budgets, replacing the us of individual rented mailing lists ultimately. The same may be true for retailers going forward, using custom models of their customer, that can change per promo, or over time, and using those as selection criteria for branding efforts or to drive traffic to a store. Both companies are extremely sensitive to the privacy concerns that my surface regarding their products, and have gone to great lengths issue very thorough privacy statements as well as educating both the consumer (about cookies) and their publishers/website owners about the concept of modeling with cookies. Ultimately, the success of either product will be a combination of results, and the willingness of consumers to allow the use of cookies to be used to better targeted offers.
I think the real front-runners of a new media can be found in the trade groups, clubs and societies that spring up to support them. One that I’ve got my eye on is The Association for Downloadable Media, I’ve been very interested in the progress of the ADM, since I’m such a podcast fan, both from a personal as well as a professional perspective. I don’t think enough of our clients are taking advantage of this medium in their communications mix. We are encouraging all of our high tech clients to have their white papers converted to podcasts (or video - but that’s another story), and seeking out online placements for their audio files as well. The ADM will be running a series of forums and hosting a party. I will certainly be attending some if not all of the sessions. Check them out. Some of the issues the ADM is wrestling with are on their site. But their biggest challenge is their effort to establish terminology, standards, guidelines and best-practices that make downloadable content easy to justify, buy, scale and measure both in advertising efficacy and audience metrics. Once content is downloaded, all trackability and visibility disappear. So standard measurements of eyeballs (eardrums?), repeat listeners, pass alongs, Behavioral Targeting possibilities vanish if they ever exitested. Kudos to this group for taking this on! They will present their first Standards and Guidelines at Ad-Tech SF on April 16th. I’m sure there will be a podcast to download later, if you can’t be there in person. Elymedia has been producing a monthly series on Web 2.0 for the SVAMA. Our topic is Emerging Media, or Web 2.0 and the format, speakers and topics will change monthly. The next meeting: Emerging Media Morning Forum
The biggest issue that I’m hearing about regarding Web 2.0 is the lack of metrics. How do you measure, what do you measure, and what tools assist you in defining success? MarketingProfs just conducted a great online virtual trade show called B2B 2.0 Expo. It was very well done — lots of content, the right vendors present, and it seemed to be well attended, judging from the sessions I listened in on. It’s hard enough just making a case to upper management for budget for blogs, podcasts, wikis etc. They all take time, resources and research. But justifying that time and those resources on an ROI basis is the real challenge. Some of the sources that were referenced for Web 2.0 metrics were Technorati (no surprise), Radian6.com (which is new to me), and a book by K.D. Paine: Measuring Public Relations. In fact, K.D. has a very cool blog, with much more detail on the ins and outs of measuring Social Media. I’ll be spending more time reading there, in my frantic attempt to keep up with this subject. I’ve fallen in love with podcasts. I usually have my iPod shuffle glued to my ears while working out, and I have recently discovered the business section of iTunes (duh, where have I been?). Rather than be overwhelmed by e-newsletters in my inbox, and print pubs that I don’t have time to read, piling up on my desk, I can instead absorb great info in what usually would be downtime. Good stuff. So, I’m currently addicted to DishyMix, from Personal Life Media. Susan Bratton, an industry legend in her own right, hosts weekly interviews with online media execs, moguls, interesting people and legends. Recent episodes have included Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak; Wenda Harris Millard, President of Media for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia; and many others. Suz’s questions are great and range from industry trends and perspectives to the silly/fun – predictions for 2008 food trends, personal stories etc. I came across PLM while doing a Web 2.0 media plan for a client and spent some time on the phone with Suz to flesh out the opportunites. This podcast network is really done right. There are multiple shows on a variety of related topics, all with weekly podcasts, blogs, and Web pages with transcripts posted on the PLM site, along with a blogs for each show and additional content. The advertising opportunities are many and varied. This is a real find, from the perspectives of a happy consumer or an advertiser.
We will be conducting a monthly breakfast meeting on Web 2.0 beginning Wed. Feb 27, at Scott’s in Palo Alto, CA. The topics and format will change monthly, but will always have a focus on emerging media. If you know of anyone who might be interested in speaking, please contact us. More on the meetings here. Hope you can join us! Social Networking is hot, and we are exploring much of it and will report back on what we see and hear. The difference between what is available and how these sites are actually used can be enlightening. I keep getting invitations to join someone’s network at LinkedIn. And I do, if I know them. And I have a profile up. But I can’t say I know how to use it, except for gathering people into groups. Clearly it’s terrific for job hunters, head hunters, and generally finding/sourcing/re-connecting with contacts and colleagues. It also appears that there is something about the “footprint” you leave behind with the size of your network. Bigger is better — better connected, newsworthy, probably influential. It’s a branding thing. We are a techno-geeky household, creating future online junkies and media consumers. We have one if not two screens in every room, videogame players, TV sets, multiple laptops, a computer per child, Gameboy. It seems to be endless. That picture at the top (infant w/ binky in front of a screen) mirrors one we have of each child at about six months old. I wonder where social networking and real networking (like conversation) collide. Probably at our dinner table…where we actually talk!While the debate rages on (how much is too much for young minds - that debate), I’m aware that we have become a media-centric and -aware family and proud of it. Both adults blog, the oldest child is already wrapped up in YouTube and Petopia and Twitter. Googling is part of the homework ritual. I would think that we are are not an unusual demo for families of Suburbia.I’ll be blogging about media, new media, emerging media, blogging, Web 2.0 and 3.0, communication, community and family. And random thoughts.[tags]Elymedia, media, direct marketing, success, interactive, marketing, media planning, media buying, lead generation, customer acquisition, email, e-mail, mailing list, list broker, ecommerce, e-commerce, clicks, strategy, measurement, Internet, productivity, results, advertising, cross-channel, multichannel, channel, launch, customer, service, CRM, segmentation, analysis, strategy, enterprise, development, brand[/tags]
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