In the last year, the explosion of search advertising seems to have left contextual and behavioral-based marketing somewhat off the radar. At last week's Search Engine Strategies Expo in New York,
all the talk focused on the new frontier for search--personalized/ local search and content integration. Contextual marketing was barely mentioned.
Search is fast, convenient, cost-effective,
and almost completely transparent. It has brought unprecedented accountability to online advertising, and in their euphoria, marketers have shifted their focus accordingly to what's known as the
bottom of the marketing funnel-- direct sales.
However, these days, the Internet's potential as a branding medium is coming into sharper focus. Rich media, broadband penetration, and perhaps
even the Unicast Video Commercial are providing reticent traditional marketers with the tools to expand their online marketing mix beyond search. But industry players say it will come down to the
refinement of contextual and behavioral targeting to facilitate further crossover.
As Revenue Science CEO Bill Gossman notes: "Behavioral targeting is the mirror image of search. They are highly
complementary. With behavioral targeting, a singular advertiser is looking for relevant prospects to bring their brand message to." Search has an extremely limited reach, he says, but it provides
advertisers with the possibility of reaching one customer through an acutely targeted search query.
Gossman also highlights the difference between behavioral targeting and contextual marketing:
"Instead of advertising to a content page, behavioral targeting allows marketers to advertise directly to a consumer, based on his or her Web behavior."
Scot McLernon, exec-VP sales and
marketing, CBSMarketwatch.com, notes that in today's fragmented advertising landscape, the more "laser-tilled" the marketing campaign, the greater the likelihood of reaching your consumer. "With
behavioral targeting you're getting closer to a little less waste, granulating the audience you're trying to reach," he says, adding that "in '96 there were really only two [major] marketing
vehicles [TV and print]; in 2004 there are over a dozen."
McLernon is quick to add that a "granulated, laser-like" reach is not the be-all/end-all solution--just one more "marketing weapon."
Dave Morgan, CEO-Tacoda Systems, agrees. He says that contextual marketing, which pegs a relevant advertiser to a page based on its content, is also an extremely useful tool for marketers, in
addition to search. "I think that contextual marketing and behavioral targeting go hand-in hand," he says, adding: "There is no question that there will be a fusion of the two in the future; right
now the systems delivering them are separate."
Revenue Science's Gossman adds that: "Aside from contextual marketing, there are no other powerful or useful tools for branding online. Also, for
publishers, [behavioral targeting] addresses the problem of unsold inventory."
One of the problems with contextual and behavioral targeting is that it isn't nearly as transparent as search is
from an accountability standpoint, according to many Web publishers.
Tacoda's Morgan notes that accountability is the secret to search's success. "The search folks hit on a secret sauce that
contextual advertisers missed," he says. "They made their product easy to use, easy to buy on a per-click or per-lead basis--they let you bid against others in a transparent way, and they don't
hound you with salespeople. Advertisers like that."
Apparently, advertisers like that a lot. According to eMarketer, search was responsible for 30.8 percent--$2.07 billion--of the $6.9 billion
spent on online advertising in 2003.
Morgan adds: "Search may not be the best product, but it's the most refined process. When behavioral and contextual marketers make their product as simple
and easy to buy--all you need is your credit card to buy search--I think we will see the same results."
From a media strategist's point of view, behavioral targeting is gaining traction. "In the
few tests we have run recently, we have seen very encouraging results in the behavioral targeting space," said David Cohen, senior-VP, interactive media director, Universal McCann Interactive. "The
challenge now is to create behavioral segments across publishers that are reasonably standardized and actionable across a wide variety of sites."
Cohen says that many of the Online Publishers
Association's members and DoubleClick are discussing these issues now as behavioral targeting begins to scale.