• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, July 30, 2009

You may just get the opportunity to do that. Then what? Well, if you listen to a couple of the leading behavioral targeting optimizers, you’d better know who you’re actually trying to target. But in many cases, marketers and agencies simply do not know.

“The key becomes, do you really know who you are looking for,” Jeff Hirsch, President & CEO, AudienceScience, said during the OMMA Behavioral “Grill The CEOs” panel. He said it’s AS’ goal to “deterministically, you are going to reach exactly who you are looking for,” but that often his customers do not know what they’re actually looking to determine. And even then, they still don’t always know what message to serve to those targets to “make sure you get optimum effects.”

Paul Martino, CEO and Co-Founder, Aggregate Knowledge, concurred, and added another big twist.

“Everyone of our customers has two optimization goals,” he said. “Our agency customers always have an audience reach goal, and they also have a cost of acquisition goal. And those two things are inherently in conflict.”

Hirsch

Martino