• by Phil Leggiere , February 27, 2008

The growth of behavioral targeting has decisively shifted the focus of many online marketers from the paradigm of the page to one of consumer-based messaging. What's often been forgotten amid all the behavioral hoopla, Russ Fradin, CEO of Adify, explains below, is that for brands the benefits of behavioral require not only targeting the right person -- but the right person in the right placement.

Behavioral Insider:  How did Adify get involved in developing platforms for build it yourself vertical networks?

Russ Fradin: We see ourselves as the back office for brands, publishers and advertisers attempting to extend their footprint and the range of quality inventory within a vertical.

What we provide are tools which enable publishers to expand their ad inventory by combining their content with content from across a wider but vertically related group of content from the Web's so-called long tail. The tools give publishers editorial and managerial control over placement and pricing of ads and, most importantly, the ability to customize how inventory is segmented by aggregating audiences and sites related to strong specific interests into a network. It also offers advertisers what they've wanted all along but [have been] missing: reach with real control.

BI: What are some examples of the kind of aggregated audiences brands have put together?

Fradin: There have been hundreds of these branded vertical networks launched in the past couple of years. Some examples are Shelter Media, which aggregated home improvement, home décor and real-estate-related information, comparison shopping and product review sites. Gay Ad network used the technology to aggregate content and inventory spread across smaller gay information, news, community and niche social networking sites.

BI: What relevance does all this have to behavioral targeting -- and vice versa?

Fradin: If you look at ad networks, the reason these guys exist and the problem they solve is how to leverage the mass fragmentation of the Web. Behavioral targeting as it's been conventionally practiced is to extend the sway of reach -- but it's done so at a cost. The reach is not correlated consistently with quality, and to the extent that's the case, the value proposition to brands is going to be limited.

The degree of fragmentation on the Web is really pretty overwhelming, if you look at it. There are 130 million sites out there, of which 95% are garbage. But even if you factor them out, that still leaves six million quality sites. So you're talking about tens, maybe hundreds of thousands, of sites within each vertical that theoretically offer quality inventory -- the kind of content brands would be happy to associate themselves with. Yet almost none of that inventory is being utilized by any national brand. It's essentially wasted from an advertising and branding viewpoint.

BI: So, despite the rallying cry of targeting people, not pages, it's not sufficient to target consumers alone without thinking about placement?

Fradin: When people talk about behavioral, the first thing they mention is usually extending frequency of campaigns against reach. But no one's really addressing the challenge of quality in frequency.

The evolution of BT has been mostly driven by a sense of ‘Wow, look at what a cool tactical solution.' But often as not, the missing link has been the question that's not addressed -- but one that doesn't go away. The real problem remains, how do you reach a quality audience in a quality environment?

In that equation, content and placement matter -- a lot. The archetypal example -- but it's more than conjecture, it really happens -- is when a brand will try to run a behavioral campaign to retarget consumers and find their ad running on the top prostitute page at MySpace. That kind of thing happens more than any ad network wants to let on. So as catchy a concept as targeting the person, not the page, may be, behavioral campaigns ignore content at their peril.

BI: Vertical networks are a way for branded content publishers to extend their reach. Do you see the kinds of extended vertical communities that are evolving leading to a renewed emphasis on syndication of branded content? What forms might that take?

Fradin: I expect that the next step in combining reach and quality will involve blurring the boundaries between site content. This is something that can only be made possible through the development of what we call ‘trusted communities' that extend the range and reach of quality content.

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