Comments On Re-Targeting

Alright, OK they found me...

I'm trying to remember the year I was at LuLu's in San Francisco for the big DoubleClick launch party for abacus. I remember something about re-messaging a person who was shopping for a Yellow Shirt, and abandoned the shopping cart. I'm not absolutely sure, but that was the first major REV on behavioral targeting.

Since then, BT has become commonplace as a very effective online marketing tool. Whether it's direct response or branding with sequential messaging, BT delivers amazing results.

I can see the big deal with the NY Times example, and some times I even get a little spooked, then very interested in why I keep seeing particular ads. Sometimes I have to re-think or retrace my web surfing behavior to realize that I was on the brand site just the day previous. Happens to me all the time, and when I'm researching a brand I usually get surrounded for the days following. John Battelle wrote a great piece on this a few days back http://battellemedia.com/archives/2010/08/on_retargeting_fix_the_conversation

When it comes to re-targeting & re-messaging, I really like the dynamic product ads, and love the NexTag versions. Last winter I was shopping for some skis via NexTag search, and viola, for the next week or so, I received a ton of ads for those skis and related products. Genius. Actually, when you get over how spooky it seems, it's actually a very good service to the user. I'm sure we'll see better and better iterations, with price drops, special offers, etc. Some early versions of this have been in the market for awhile.

Conversational Media is a whole new frontier, and we're working on some amazing new products to empower our advertising partners in unique ways. By the very nature of Conversational Media, we know that we have users who are very engaged with the content they're consuming. So, naturally, studying a users engagement within a conversation, rather than a "site visit" can provide key learnings and targeting opportunities. BuzzLogic is really the only media company today who can gain from targeting & re-targeting users who are part of the conversation.

Today is the era of DSP's, Exchanges, and Mega Networks. It only makes sense to add more targeting based on rich data in today's media environment.