• by Tom Hespos , July 18, 2006

Today's column deals with something you might consider a 101-level concept, but you would be surprised at the number of online advertisers who manage to screw it up. If you've spent years buying traditional media or overseeing a brand that does, that experience can make it even easier to forget about some of the fundamental differences between advertising online and advertising in broadcast media. One of those differences is how ads are targeted. Another is how ads are bought. If you're not aware of these two differences when you plan a campaign, you could wind up focusing your efforts too tightly. Here's what I mean.

Let's say we're putting together a test launch of a widget in Philadelphia. To advertise that widget, we decide to go with some spot radio, so we plan to purchase 15 GRPs a week in Philly against our demographic target--Men 18-49. We do a little spot cable, too. and we also look to advertise the widget online across six content sites, using inventory that is both geotargeted to the Philadelphia DMA and demo-targeted to M18-49.

There is a huge difference between how the television and radio components will deliver and how the Internet advertising will be served up.

One big difference is that the Internet advertising is a lot more focused on the target. Remember that, in advertising on the radio and on cable TV, our ads are guaranteed against our demo target of M18-49. But in advertising in those environments, we also reach a ton of women, kids, senior citizens and other folks we might not consider to be part of our target market. Assuming that the widget can be used or purchased by people outside the demographic and geographic target, some of those people from outside the targeting parameters of the traditional plan are going to buy the product.

The Internet's targetability looks like a surgical scalpel in comparison. Depending on the targeting methodology, we will have varying degrees of spill outside the demo target, but it's nothing in comparison to the spill we get advertising on the radio and on cable. In the context of the media plan, broadcast is targeted just about as tightly as it can be, and it ends up delivering to the wider market, in part because of how it is guaranteed against the demo target. On the other hand, the Internet advertising is targeted just about as tightly as it can be as well, but it delivers to a much smaller (but much more targeted) audience. Because it is delivered impression by impression, and each impression is targeted, we don't get the spill that we get with broadcast.

The dynamics of how broadcast and online are purchased have led quite a few advertisers to carve out a distinct role for online in the media mix --online becomes the focused medium that reaches the target and the target only. At the same time, broadcast inherits heavy-lifting chores, in large part due to the limitations on its targetability.

Seems strange, doesn't it? One medium does a great job of reaching a focused audience and is rewarded for it by being relegated to the role formerly played by direct mail.

Rather than pigeonholing online into this role, advertisers should be testing various levels of targeting. For instance, if the combination demo/geo targeting I described above was available for a $15 CPM, perhaps the widget advertiser should experiment with just the geotargeting at $7 or $8 CPM, to see how it performs.

Try it out on your campaign. You might be pleasantly surprised to find more customers on a cheaper cost basis by loosening the targeting restrictions a bit.