The smartest, yet simplest epiphany I’ve heard so far today at the OMMA M&M conference came from Varick Media Management’s Darren Herman who settled the whole behavioral targeting vs. contextual targeting debate for me.
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As a content creator and an editor, I’ve been wrestling with the value of the context we provide advertisers to reach our audiences. But as a guy who covers the science of online metrics and technology, I can see the raw power of targeting consumers based on their behavioral patterns, not where they happen to be online at that specific moment.
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But Herman said the solution is really quite simple: data that shows the relative value of reaching a consumer via those two targeting schemes.
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“People ask me if behavior is worth more, or if context is worth more,†he quipped. “I think you can’t answer that until you can value that.â€