• by mackenzie , Ted Shergalis , July 1, 2005

Roger Federer steps up to the baseline. He checks the ball in his hand, bounces it... once, twice, three times in his preserve routine. He brings the ball to the racket face and then tosses it up into the air... the serve screams over the net and nicks the tape. Ace.

Most of us can only dream of achieving this level of tennis acumen. For most of us, our day jobs relegate us to spectators or - at best - weekend warriors. However, even if you don't have Wimbledon aspirations, once you know the rudiments of the game and can consistently hit the ball over the net you will inevitably desire to bring your game to the next level. That will require you to stop thinking about the mechanics of your swing and instead focus on playing a truly outstanding point, game, and then match.

So what does this have to do with online marketing and behavioral targeting? I would argue that we, as an industry, are no longer beginners or weekend Wimbledon warriors. We have played this game before and have the battle scars inflicted by broken linking URLs to prove it. We know how to get an ad from A to B and how to deliver a prospect to the right landing page with minimal hassle. We know how to take ads out of rotation that aren't performing. And, we've learned enough to work with publishers to resolve impression discrepancies before it results in fisticuffs.

We have come a long way. We are consistently getting the ball over the net. Now we must take a longer view and understand how to win the game - not just play it. When we do that, everyone wins - advertisers, publishers and consumers.

Raising our Game Technologies and standards have come a long way in the past couple of years. This has made for better tools and more consistent execution. So what's next for the harried online marketing professional? Is it time to kick our collective feet up and be happy with business as usual? Definitely not - there is simply too much opportunity (and too much competition) to sit back and continue to do as we have done.

We have to move beyond just serving up impressions and counting clicks to running truly effective online marketing campaigns. We need to spend more time thinking about the strategies behind our campaigns than just the execution of the campaigns. We need to understand and visualize the results we are hoping to achieve and make sure we collect the data and measure the results to determine whether or not we've been successful.

Many companies and industry groups have spent a lot of time and energy setting the groundwork for online marketing to be able to successfully transition to the next level. For example, the Interactive Advertising Bureau's work on standards for impression counting, formats and sizes, and quantifying brand impact were a necessary step to legitimize the nascent field of online marketing and making traditional marketers more comfortable moving their budgets online.

But it seems to me that with this foothold, the opportunity is now before us to increase our reach even further. By focusing on the long view - in particular the two strategies outlined below - we can make a play for the entire match versus just the next point.

1. Integration of complementary marketing tools With the recent arrival of advanced new tools, like behavioral targeting, search optimization, landing page optimization, clustering, path analysis, and more; marketers can implement more creative, compelling and complex marketing campaigns. While each technique requires that you know the fundamentals, if mastered and deployed properly, they can also take your online marketing campaign to the next level. The opportunities are almost limitless and - I would argue - a lot more interesting and valuable than ones that rely solely on execution.

2. Integration of the consumer into the marketing equation As consumers increasingly gain control over how marketers market to them, and are even recruited to participate in the marketing and brand-building process, our work must take them into account. It does not make sense to resist this sea change in consumer attitude. Instead, those marketers who take the long view and realize their own objectives by empowering consumers will ultimately triumph.

We all know that online is the most measurable and accountable of all media; we know when campaigns are working and driving results. In this way, online marketing measurability is akin to the line drawn on the court. Without the lines you don't know if a shot is short or long, in or out. You can't improve your game without the lines. Without the lines tennis is a pastime or hobby. The lines make it a sport. The measurability of online marketing makes it a real and valuable marketing channel.

So our challenge now is to move beyond getting the ball over the net or the ads to the page. It's time to raise the level of our game. Tennis anyone?