Emerging `Common' Market to Further Erode Privacy

"When you select a network for your behaviorally targeted campaign, by definition you limit opportunities to reach a target population to that network's base of identifiable visitors on that network's group of participating sites, using that network's technology exclusively.
An open marketplace, by contrast, is one where no single provider sits in the middle of every transaction. Instead, many networks, publishers, advertisers and technology providers all link together in order to give each one equal access to the combined pool."

3 Steps to Targeting Nirvana. Bennett Zucker. March 1, 2007

Mirror, Mirror on the Data Wall: Who's the Best Targeted Marketer Now

aCerno: The Customer Creation Company Services Media

Retargeting You Once, Twice, Thrice and More!

"Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is one of the most effective forms of targeting, where you simply target a set of known consumers across the internet - known because they demonstrated a specific action or interest on your site. .. Remix Media's approach lets you retarget these consumers in real-time after they've left your site, giving you the opportunity to drive them back with compelling offers and targeted messaging."

Remix Media: Retargeting

Roll That (Targeting and Retargeted) Video Ad

"AdRoll is the first and only streaming video network that allows you to do behavioral retargeting, which has been shown to improve click through and conversion rates by >300%... Use BlueLithium's advanced targeting capabilities to refine the focus of your video campaigns, reaching those consumers with certain demographic profiles for instance, or those in certain geographic regions."

The first video streaming network with behavioral targeting capabilities

Joost Watch Those Targeted Ads!

"While personal IDs will not be stored on a central server -- they will remain on one's own PC -- advertisers will be able to cherry pick users by location, time/date of viewing, viewing history and preferences, and even profiles of Joost members who opt-in. In the future both advertisers (and programmers) will have the flexibility to upload content themselves... Joost advised Jack Myers Media Business Report that it is planning additional announcements that could represent significant advances in both program content and advertising relationships."

JOOST Seeks to Redefine Television for Viewers and Advertisers. Feb. 21, 2007

Come Spy With Me, While We Fly Away

"What we call dynamic retargeting can collect information on the fly. We work for several travel advertisers where destination intent is a key driver in response. Many of our travel marketers send us dynamically information as to where that user wants to go when they went to that Web site. So, instead of saying this user went to this airline site and left, we can know that they went to the Web site but searched for a flight to a destination... "

BT's Next Stage: Custom Creative By Steve Smith, Friday, Feb 23, 2007

MySpace and IGN Fans. Uncle Rupert (Murdoch) is Listening-in

"Fox Interactive is already taking steps to mine the wealth of personal information found on profile pages on MySpace and other sites to better target ads.

"With SDC, we'll be able to plug all that rich data into their ad optimization technology and be able to fine-tune our ad delivery on a much more targeted basis," explained Burkart. She said Fox is already working with brand marketers to figure out what kinds of user data are most valuable to them."

Fox Interactive Buys Strategic Data Corp., Plans Ad Targeting Upgrade
Mark Walsh, Online Media Daily. Feb 23, 2007

Regulators Looking into the Sirius and XM Radio Merger: Don't Forget Impact on Ad market--Let alone Privacy!

"Vernon Irvin, XM Satellite Radio's CMO, said his company is starting to play with the idea of recommending choices to the consumer. As an example, he cited the radios (which in the future will boast graphical color displays) could become devices that will point out the nearest Starbucks and perhaps even preorder your latte so it would be ready for you to pick up during your commute. He didn't mention it, but you can bet XM would gladly charge Starbucks (or McDonald's, or a host of other national franchises) for inclusion in such a network."

2020 Vision: The Future of Advertising By Rebecca Lieb, January 26, 2007

Excuses, Excuses from the Interactive Ad Industry About Protecting Your Privacy

"Currently mobile ad solutions are mostly based on either specific application contexts like 'we know someone likes to download ringtones so we can target ringtone ads,' or by profile, as in 'someone uses X sort of handsets.' Adding search behavior to that moves the mobile targeting learning curve ahead dramatically. But there's still another dimension that can make behavioral profile much more powerful. That's aggregating all the historical data related to search and browsing with all the demographic and subscription information in databases including off-network content. There are new technologies we're working with that will enable us very soon to move in that direction. "

The Emerging Nexus Of BT And Mobile Search by Jim Leggiere, Feb 14, 2007

Watch Out for that "Last Mile." Marketers are Ready

" As a savvy marketer, you've conquered every advertising medium from television, to radio to the Internet. What determines the success of your marketing campaign resides on the "the last mile"-the ability to influence your audience at the very moment they are ready to take action. Medio's Advertising Solution is the answer to reaching your target audience during the last mile while they are searching on a device that they use most-the mobile phone. With precise targeting capabilities, Medio enables you to identify and reach audiences that are interested in what you're selling-at just the right time-to achieve the best results for your campaign. And through our unique partnerships with mobile carriers like Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA, your ads are intuitively integrated into the consumers' mobile search experience while its relevance drives maximum response."

Medio Products

Working with Verizon Wireless

Viral and Word-of-Mouth Marketing: Beware of Bending Reality for Brands

"For example, to break a new alcohol brand, you could use a stealth production association with music celebrities and people in their circles. Such a campaign comes down to hitting a select number of the music key influencers, surrounding them with the brand and to trying to get them to adopt the brand organically, instead of just paying them to do such. So, with music stars, you can give their limo drivers a payout to make sure your client's drink is the beverage of choice in the limo going into the city; you can pay the sound engineer and studio manager to have it in the booth at the recording studios; place it at the VIP tables at the A-list clubs, et cetera. Document the celebrities drinking it and having it at their tables and then give that out to the wire services and buzz it up online on the blogs and other places."

Q&A with guerilla PR's Michael Leifer (Part 2 of 2). April 26, 2006

Watch What You Say: Your Mobile (and Madison Avenue) are listening in

That Video Streaming Ad is Tracking You--Every Click You Make

Advertisers and marketers, in pursuit of their new grail called "engagement," are working to better understand how to manipulate our emotions and other brain behaviors. Now they are fitting human subjects with so-called "smart garments" that are just one of the "new multiple technologies on the market that allow continuous unobtrusive monitoring of biologically based human responses..." In a recent study focused on testing "a biologically based measure of audience engagement," ad researchers fitted subjects with a "state-of-the-art smart garment that...simultaneously collects pulmonary, cardiac, dermal, postural, and vocal information...These multiple channels of biologically based information are combined across audience members and translated into an easily read, easily interpreted, moment-to-moment time-locked index of emotional engagement." The subjects were watching commercials.

Yikes! Next time you go to a tailor for an alteration, you better watch out how they fit you. Seriously, such efforts are designed to take advertising to places it should not tread.

"A Biologically Based Measure of Emotional Engagement: Context Matters." Carl D. Marci, M.D. Journal of Advertising Research. December 2006

You Will Be Phoning Home: To Marketers (and Perhaps even the NSA)

"Mobile carriers are sitting on one of the fattest, highest, most granular piles of consumer behavior data the world has ever known. And most of them haven't a clue how to use it as a foundation for media and marketing. Sprint's media group recently hinted that it would be using some kind of behavioral targeting in its newly launched ad networks for phone media, but I am not sure what, if any, form that will take. At a mobile marketing conference last spring, Cingular/AT&T's content honcho Jim Ryan admitted it had incredibly detailed data for marketers -but not in a form they could access in any meaningful way yet.

In the mobile world, parsing your client base by over and under age 34 is still considered nano-segmentation. The possibilities for BT off someone's commercial calling patterns is as scary as it is enticing. How much would Pizza Hit pay to get a coupon on the phone of the guy who calls Domino's once a week? How much would Domino's pay to keep Pizza Hut's coupon from its customer? Wisely, the carriers will not give up that user or that data without due diligence over its consequences. But the irony is that carriers need BT more than any other medium. That phone deck is the world's worst interface because it is so small and so dumb. Personalized, dynamic content served to my flip phone is the inevitable solution, but tracking my phone browser behaviors may be the best way to customize the user deck according to user habits. "

"Targeting the New Year. " Steve Smith. Behavioral Insider. Jan. 5, 2007.

Convergence Online Marketing

Take the online tour of Omniture's new Genesis "Plug and Play" online marketing product. Genesis links up many data collection, tracking and ad targeting vendors. Take a look especially at "chapter" 3.

Microsoft Makes You an Online Data Target

"By relying on demographic data that customers often provide during the sign-up process for Windows Lives services and by tracking usage and behavior across the network...we blend information that customers offer to us, such as their age or gender, along with browsing and search histories...AdCenter's targeting capabilities utilize data captured from a variety of sources. For example, using Windows Live ID Passport data, we are able to gather information about our audience's age, gender and location, and then utilize this to allow customers to target these specific audiences with their ads."

Interview with Alexandra Tibbetts, Microsoft adCenter director of product management
Behavioral Insider: Toward Channel-Agnostic Targeting. Phil Leggiere. December 15, 2006

Web 2.0 is Watching You

"'With the evolution of Web 2.0 and the more interactive, networked nature of the online customer experience, marketers are challenged with understanding their customers' behaviors across various distributed channels on the internet,' said Akin Arikan, senior segment manager, Unica Corporation. "Measuring click-throughs to a company's web site is no longer a direct line and is insufficient for visitor-to-customer conversion metrics. Unica's web analytics solution continues to provide companies with new capabilities for reporting, measuring and analyzing customer data across the distributed internet channels, tying customer behaviors across otherwise disconnected visit sessions and times. Perhaps even more importantly, NetInsight's unique open data warehouse and built-in connectivity means internet behavior is tied to other channels for richer customer profiles and understanding.'"

"Unica Releases Enhanced Web Analytics Solution: Affinium NetInsight 7.1 Offers Real Time, Visual Exploration Analytical Capabilities; Helps Marketers Analyze and Measure the Web 2.0 Customer Experience," 5 Dec. 2006

Tracking You Online in 2007

"I see behavioral targeting being a key component in most online advertising campaigns in 2007 and beyond. That's not to say that behavioral is the only targeting strategy, however it is clearly an advantage for an advertiser to truly reach an individual who has expressed an affinity for their product and/or service through their actions.... I believe that we will see BT involved in the successful campaigns and, through coordinating the capabilities of BT across other targeting and optimization strategies, we will see highly leveraged results. BT will be a key component in driving ad spending from more mass media to the one-to-one opportunities available on the web."

Roger Park, "Get More from Your BT Campaign" (interview with Revenue Science's Chief Revenue Officer Jeff Hirsch), iMedia Connection, 12 Dec. 2006

Microsoft is Watching You--via Your Video Recorder

"The company filed a patent application this week for a system that would maintain a database of advertisements on a PVR. Then when you play back a recording, the PVR will detect when there should be a commercial break in the programming and insert a different commercial. Each time you watch the show, you could see a different commercial."

Brad Linder, "Microsoft Seeks Patent for PVR-based Advertising," PVRWire, 9 Dec. 2006

Big Phone Companies Tracking/Targeting You (Hey, Attention NSA!)

"Now that Verizon has built out its video service to the tune of 118,000 customers, the telco is preparing to deploy local, interactive and video-on-demand advertising opportunities to its subscribers next year. The prospect of additional advanced ad vehicles in the marketplace...could also bring advertisers more detailed metrics on usage of such enhanced ads....

"AT&T also expects to begin offering local ads next year, and possibly to offer ad avails in VOD, as cable operators do today, as well as in shows played back on digital video recorders....

"Telcos have exhibited a willingness to build advanced ad opportunities from the ground up with input from marketers, especially when it comes to the data advertisers want, [Jen Soch, VP and group director for advanced TV for MediaVest] said. "[The telcos] are coming in and saying, 'What do you need, what do you want?'

"...AT&T also likes the promise of an ad play that combines mobile phones, television and the Internet."
Daisy Whitney, "Telcos Laying Groundwork for Offensive: MSOs, DBS Face Greater Competition as Local, Dynamic Ad Insertion Nears," TV Week, 11 Dec. 2006

Automating Your Loss of Privacy

"Touch Clarity, the leading provider of automated on-site behavioral targeting, today announces that Peter Elleby... has joined the company as Vice President of Engineering. Elleby will guide the technical development of the highly sophisticated, automated targeting solution, exploiting the latest concurrent engineering principles and agile development methodologies.... Elleby has deep expertise in artificial intelligence, automated real-time optimization and data mining solutions."
"Touch Clarity appoints Peter Elleby to VP of Engineering: Data-Mining and Real-Time Optimization Expert to Advance the Development of leading On-Site Behavioral Targeting Solution," SourceWire, 7 Dec. 2006

What to Watch Out for in 2007

"For online content providers, this isn't the time to be complacent. To gain or maintain a dominant segment share, you must continue to invest to strategically position yourself. At some point, growth will slow and the market will mature. Then you can sit around and collect your cash flow. Until then, you must seize every reasonable opportunity to grow....

It's critical to continue to drive qualified readers to your site. When assessing traffic, consider the following as they relate to your ability to charge for advertising:

• Reader profile. This including users' demographics and psychographics. It's essential to deliver readers that advertisers are interested in reaching. This means knowing your readers through information gathered on your site through surveys, content, and behavioral targeting."

Heidi Cohen, "Don't Get Complacent About Online Advertising," ClickZ Network, 7 Dec. 2006 (Sponsored by Coremetrics)

Those Spying Eyes

"Behavioral targeting is an advertising methodology in which an advertiser's message is shown to consumers based on previous actions they've taken, particularly the sites they've visited and the actions they've taken on these sites. There are several behavioral targeting products on the market for reaching automotive intenders. The most popular ones are:

• Focused targeting against an auto intender: Targeting a consumer who has visited a specific make, model, or category.

• General targeting against an auto intender: Targeting a consumer who has visited an auto site or an auto section (not specific to any model).

• Retargeting or remessaging: Serving ads to consumers who have visited an advertiser's site but left before completing a specific action.

• Keyword targeting: Serving ads to consumers who have searched for a specific word or term."

Anna Papadopoulos, "Behavioral Targeting Drives Automotive," ClickZ Networks, 6 Dec. 2006

The Whole (Marketing) World is Reading Your Email

"...[T]he Alterian Marketing Suite now includes the full functionality of Dynamic Messenger, the company's Web 2.0 email and online marketing application... delivers the first successful merger of traditional database marketing operations such as data modeling, segmentation, selection, and analysis with online marketing execution in a single application and workflow.... [B]y giving marketers proximity to combined customer, online and offline data with Alterian's unique click and drag modeling and analysis tools, and then immediate execution of online campaigns to selected customer segments using data-driven email content and personalisati