Making Content New

I read a really well thought-out piece on AdExchanger earlier from Tim Ogilvie of AdBuyer.com (demand-side platform focused on both display and search). “Roadmapping The Ad Exchange For Search Marketers” gives marketers experienced in SEM a series of steps to take to leverage data-driven targeting through display advertising exchanges.

A couple of Tim’s points stood out to me and inspired some additional thoughts:

• “Phase Two: Build a target profile of your audience …To do this effectively, you’ll develop a profile of the audience that responds to your marketing. Identifying your highest potential customers will allow you to target your ads as tightly as possible. Highly targeted ads are more relevant and more likely to succeed. (Just like search.)”

This is an area where pre-existing customer data adds tons of value. Database marketers in particular have an edge – perform RFM and segmentation analyses on your customer data to determine who’s been most profitable and likely to buy. Look at the demographics and geographies of these customers to develop a starting point for a target profile.

• “Phase Three: Find the most efficient way to reach your target audience …Should you target people or pages? You should use both! This is like asking whether you should use exact match or broad match in search. Targeting people, much like exact match keywords, provides access to a tightly defined audience but can be expensive and limited in scale. Targeting pages is more akin to broad match keywords: it’s usually only a loose proxy for the audience you’re trying to reach, but it’s easier to build scale and often more efficient.”

Targeting pages also allows you the opportunity to further refine your target audience profile. For example, say you’re a crafts retailer, and you initially set your target as “Women 34-45 who have at least one child and have been to a photo-sharing site.” But instead of just buying this audience, you also buy certain sites: Aol Living, NYTimes.com Home & Garden, etc. Let’s say performance via these sites show that “young single urban women 22-25” significantly outperform other audience segments of these sites – you can now refine your target audience and optimize the campaign to better reach this segment .

For anyone who’s ran a campaign: how hard is this in practice? Would taking the steps Tim prescribes help you better target your display advertising? Any success in leveraging your existing customer data?

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