DM Confidential

Over the past few years, and increasingly over the past few months, one technology firm that allows advertisers to target consumers has taken some serious heat. In last weeks article we discussed desktop application issues that were focused on the distribution models and practices. However, to look at the other side of this issue, lets turn towards advertising as an entire community. From the beginning of time, the most valuable advertising has been advertising that is put directly in front of a consumer who wants to see that product or ad. After a decade of tinkering and trial, more sophisticated online advertising techniques and technologies are poised to deliver on the promise. As the audience fragments, the aim of marketers' is sharpening—and the art of selling will never be the same.

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Ad targeting is nearly as old as the ad industry itself. Putting the right message in front of the right consumer at the right time — never wasting money or an opportunity — has been the dream of every marketer who ever pitched a product.
To accomplish successful targeting is both enticiung and elusive. Some companies are focused on behavioral, others on contextual marketing programs. It's obvious that when marketers target ads at an audience receptive to their pitch, their campaigns are likely to be more effective. But the audience is elusive. Who are they? How do you find them? What's the best way to touch their hearts and minds once they're found?
As 84% of US advertising professionals told the American Advertising Federation last November, what makes the Internet different from traditional media is that it encompasses both classic targeting methods, such as demographic and psychographic profiling, and interactive ones, such as behavioral targeting and paid search.

Online Marketing has an opportunity to succeed in both the old world and the new world. Online advertisers can run coordinated, multi-channel campaigns, and take advantage of new tools that allow for more precise targeting of today's fragmented audiences.
One of the Mantra’s of a well respected marketing company for their online division is “The effectiveness of advertising today is terrible, so you don't have to be perfect, you just have to be better."
One way to do that is by being more relevant.
Location, location, location! This is as important in real estate as it is in internet advertising. For Internet advertising in particular, where the annoyance factor is large and the ease with which users can ignore or click away ads is equally large, relevance and effectiveness go hand in hand.
In a recent survey, 66% of US consumers said they'd find banner ads less intrusive or annoying if they were more relevant.

A sizeable minority of males and females are willing to have their non-personally identifiable information (such as zip code or gender) tracked in order to receive more relevant ads. On the other hand, data shows that a majority of respondents (56.9%) would mind if advertisers or Web sites track even such non-personal data, even as a trade-off for relevant advertising. This points to the continued need to deliver not only relevant ads, but ads that also entertain or inform enough to break through consumer resistance.
Clearly behavioral marketing, paid search and other new techniques are breaking down consumer resistance online — to an extent never before seen. Online advertising is bringing many innovations to targeting, helping marketers reach consumers with relevant messages.