Commentary
Is Re-Targeting The 'New Behavioral Targeting,' Or Is It Just A Subset
- by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, July 21, 2010
The consensus seems to be that it's part of the bigger ecosystem, and when used properly, can greatly enhance performance and results.
"We were really disappointed with what behavioral targeting was," said Allen Stern, VP, Media Director, Signal to Noise. "It was such a black box. And the price we had to pay for it, never paid out."
Now that the industry is beginning to "take the covers off" of the process, Stern said it's become more palatable among online marketers who can plot the actual return on their spending.
"The old behavioral targeting was harvesting the data from other sites. And the new behavioral targeting is harvesting your data," he said.
He said that "scale is still an issue," but that when conducted properly retargeting campaigns can generate better returns than classic behavioral targeting.
"That can be a very, very small data pool, but it may still be worth doing it, because those folks will just perform better," he said.
Joe Mandese is the Editor in Chief of MediaPost. You can reach Joe at joe@mediapost.com.
Re-targeting isn't behavioral targeting. It is just a form of cookie stuffing that all to0 often overstates true performance and real value of the media. If your ad is served on a garbage site below the fold, it serves no value than to cookie stuffing. The vast majority of the re-targeting that is being popped out there is of cookie stuffing variety and Advertisers need to beware of how they evaluate performance. It is by no means premium advertising and nobody should be paying a high CPM for this impression inventory.
ReTargeting is a form of behavioral targeting in that it shows ads to people who have shown interest in your site - if someone's been to your website, they will see your ads. Additionally, it lets the people who viewed your website see more relevant ads.
As far as inventory goes, some companies, like ReTargeter, have access to almost all of the inventory out there. They can show ads exclusively above the fold, on premium websites. However, the beauty of ReTargeting is that it doesn't need to be on the best relevant sites to your business - it shows impressions based on your audience's browsing behavior. Of course, some companies do have an extensive amount of control over where an advertiser can show (and not show) ads.
The dynamic display optimization firm I joined last year - Dapper - has since been acquired by Yahoo, something I'm thrilled about because what we saw as an independent firm was that 80-90% of retargeting ROI tends to come from Yahoo properties. Now that I've been in the space for a while, what I'm realizing is that some of the largest retargeting firms out there are getting extremely low-cost RT conversions on strong-ROI places like Yahoo, and then fattening their margins (while delivering little/no add'l scale) by buying tons of low-grade impressions.
They say "I only charge for clicks, so we're aligned", but if 90% of the conversions come from 10% of the clicks, and the other 90% of clicks do nothing but fatten the retargeting firm's wallet, advertisers are being taken for a ride.