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Behavioral targeting networks will directly take marketers’ business. Seems easy enough. They have powerful optimization engines and you can access reports online. So why use an agency? As co-founder of an interactive agency, clearly I’m not objective in this discussion but what I can offer is a perspective born of much experience and observation. Many of our publisher partners and marketers relay the value add of agency experience is, in fact, a value add worthy of the agency fees. Agencies can significantly, positively impact behavioral targeting programs, pushing campaigns towards optimized exposure and revenue potential. Agencies can contribute on many levels, but in particular the initial planning and on-going optimization of programs are best left to objective third parties who can effectively negotiate on your behalf.
Planning
Agencies have the tools, knowledge and relationships to negotiate the best plan recommendations. They have a full picture of the available options, as well as applicable strengths and weaknesses. Agencies with any experience may have specific histories with chosen publishers or networks that allow them to avoid any campaign bumps.
Agencies use research tools to better evaluate audience composition and appropriateness for specific campaign purpose and have the experience to level set proposed behavioral pricing models and prices against campaign goals. Sure, a publisher can give you their stats and quote you prices. Collect info from many publishers and you will have a broader picture of available options but it will be from the sell side of the business and you will have to know the right questions to probe further. This is where agencies excel.
Agencies move beyond issues of price to understand how each program may fit (or not) into a campaign. Technology smarts require a constant commitment to keeping up with a highly dynamic industry. Marketers have too much to do to also stay on top of optimization capabilities, pricing models, segmentation options, site lists, opt-out policies, demographic and geographic sorts, frequency capping and day parting policies, as well as staffing, contract and performance notes for each potential publisher partner. Agencies can fill that role, and because of the breadth of experience they bring from across clients and industry connections they can also evaluate reputation, strength of staff, and network.
Agencies can also simplify the complicated. Most established advertising networks offer a combination of behavioral targeting, demographic, contextual and retargeting technology, however they all like to differentiate themselves by naming the capabilities something different. Often, there’s a lot of similarity in the targeting capabilities. Without being engrossed in these types of campaigns on a regular basis, the naming can leave you very confused.
Retargeting naming (examples):
NetPlus Marketing, a full-service interactive agency based outside of Philadelphia, announced today that it was ranked the ninth best place to work in Pennsylvania by the Central Penn Business Journal and partners. NetPlus was honored at an awards ceremony held on November 28, 2006 that recognized the 50 finalists in each category, medium- and large-sized businesses. The company attributes its high ranking in the list to a positive attitude that genuinely embraces employee participation at every level in an open, family-friendly atmosphere that facilitates great people doing great work.
In addition to competitive benefits, NetPlus listens to its employees, providing an open, caring environment that nurtures the team spirit with monthly “lunch and learn” events, celebrations and even a company movie night. NetPlus also supports the team’s community involvement donating a PTO day to those that want to contribute their time to charitable activities. Career development is also a priority and the company provides an annual budget for special training as well as hosting formal classes in-house.
“NetPlus is a place where people really like each other and enjoy working together to meet high expectations. We cultivate a team of leaders who are passionate about the work that we do and who value working with good people,” said co-founder and President Denise Zimmerman. “Our industry is still relatively new and many of our team have helped define a new service in a dramatically changing landscape. This creates a special bond between staffers where they are personally vested in the future of the company and can have an impact on their own careers.”
Companies from across the state entered the nomination process consisting of an evaluation of workplace policies, practices, philosophy, systems and demographic and an employee survey to measure the employee experience, which was filled out by nearly 20,000 Pennsylvania employees.
Zimmerman and co-founder Robin Neifield are overjoyed at the news, and so are their employees. “There are over 300,000 businesses in Pennsylvania, and to be one of the top ten best places to work is truly exciting and a testament to the positive work environment we have worked hard to create and maintain,” said Neifield. “As a business that focuses on getting results, we know that a work environment that nurtures individuality, creativity and a strong work ethic is what produces those results.”
About NetPlus Marketing:
NetPlus Marketing is a top 50 full service interactive agency. Celebrating 10 years of success, NetPlus Marketing creates programs that have measurable impact on their clients’ marketing and business objectives. NetPlus has been delivering award-winning, online marketing and advertising programs since 1996 for clients such as Aramark, Charming Shoppes, Inc., Crosstown Traders, Inc., Hanover Direct, Inc., Harriet Carter, Limited Too, Nature Made, Rita’s Water Ice Franchise Company LLC, Toll Brothers, Inc., Universal Studios, and other discerning marketers.
Media Contact:
Morgan McDowell
blast! PR for NetPlus Marketing
919-833-9975 x.12
morgan@blastpr.com
nteractive agency NetPlus Marketing has won a MarCom Creative Gold Award in the Interactive: Web site category for Rita’s Water Ice Franchise Company. NetPlus was chosen from over 5,000 entrants to receive the prestigious honor for work that exceeds the high standards of the industry norm.
Launched in August, the interactive site (www.ritastbd.com) was designed to invite users to suggest a name for a new blended treat, which combines flavors of Italian ice, custard and cookie pieces. It featured “recipe cards” from which users could pick flavors, and, through clever use of rich media creative, users would be shown a picture and a flavor name for their new creation. As part of the coinciding offline campaign, the new product was made available throughout the Lehigh Valley, PA area, where, after tasting, patrons were encouraged to go to the site to suggest names and flavor combinations.
“This award belongs to Rita’s team as well. Forward-thinking companies such as Rita’s allow us the flexibility to extend ourselves creatively to bring more innovative thinking to the process and a winning outcome. The Rita’s TBD Web site is a proud example of innovative technology and design to effectively engage the customer directly with the brand even at a product development level to benefit multiple business and marketing objectives,” said Denise Zimmerman, president and CSO of NetPlus Marketing. “As the agency continues to evolve and expand its suite of creative services, the industry can continue to expect the utmost creativity and innovation from us.”
Administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals, the MarCom Creative Awards is an international competition for marketing and communication professionals and is considered one of the largest of its kind in the world. Entries come from corporate marketing and communication departments, advertising agencies, PR agencies, design shops, and production companies. Past winners have included specialty agencies, media conglomerates, and Fortune 50 companies.
About NetPlus Marketing:
NetPlus Marketing is a top 50 full service interactive agency. Celebrating 10 years of success, NetPlus Marketing creates programs that have measurable impact on their clients’ marketing and business objectives. NetPlus has been delivering award-winning, online marketing and advertising programs since 1996 for clients such as Aramark, Charming Shoppes, Inc., Crosstown Traders, Inc., Hanover Direct, Inc., Harriet Carter, Limited Too, Nature Made, Rita’s Water Ice Franchise Company LLC, Toll Brothers, Inc., Universal Studios, and other discerning marketers. To learn more visit: www.netplusmarketing.com.
Originally published on
The last year or so has seen tremendous growth in all digital marketing endeavors. That’s created a talent shortage that leaves many behavioral marketing vendors, agencies, and marketers desperately searching for immediate help. We’re also looking for the next generation of online advertising pros. Online media departments are poaching talent from the shop down the block or from their publisher partners, but the more forward-thinking are building the talent pool through cross-training of existing staff and ground-up training of entry-level marketers.
Behavioral marketing in particular should lend itself to learning from long-standing academic work in the consumer behavior field. But where’s the intersection of academic training and research on consumer behavior and online behavioral targeting? I’m looking in part to academia to contribute to behavioral targeting’s future in two ways.
Meaningful Curriculum Changes
Colleges and universities are many steps behind where they need to be to prepare future marketers. Most undergraduate and graduate programs are woefully lacking in online depth, and curricula are almost never paired with the data agility necessary in today’s information-intensive environments. A college graduate who is versed in marketing basics, consumer behavior, data manipulation, and interpretation and who can write well would be a wonderful gift. I’ll take a dozen, please.
Perhaps more important, our colleges aren’t teaching students how to think about behavior in interactive environments, how to recognize patterns, and how to understand motivations and actions. These are the basics of marketing in our world, but we’re not turning out beginners with a foundation on which to build.
It’s not the kids. This generation of young adults has grown up with the Internet. It’s device- and Web-savvy. Students must be hungry to apply their energy and enthusiasm to their generation’s channel, and they likely have tremendous insights to contribute to the conversation. My bet is the progressive schools that can establish the right mix of classes and approach will be oversubscribed immediately. That would be great news for them… and the industry.
It may be the professors. Most tenured professors aren’t trained in, nor have they worked in, online marketing. They may not have a comfort level with its application. The field is too new. The theory is presented in numerous how-to books published by pioneer practitioners, but that theory hasn’t matured and may never mature in an industry so dynamic that the opportunities and tools literally change monthly, if not weekly. With the ups and downs, bubbles and mythology that have surrounded online marketing, staid educational institutions could once be forgiven for waiting to see how permanent this trend might be.
They no longer have that excuse.
Marketing practitioners also bear some of this responsibility. We should consider teaching sabbaticals to veteran online marketers and sponsor meaningful paid and unpaid internship programs and co-op education opportunities. We should partner with local educational institutions to help them create a course, build case studies for dissection, or develop a major curriculum that will produce the entry-level staffers who can become tomorrow’s innovators. From a purely practical standpoint, we must plant the seeds of our own future.
Research
Never before have we been so rich in consumer behavior data points. Most deep pools of online consumer behavior data currently belong to commercial entities. They built the data engines, collect the data, and use it for their or their clients’ purposes. Sometimes, they explore their data for deeper insights and publish whitepapers that answer questions that interest them. But the stock of data that describes online consumer behavior is disconnected from third parties who have the scientific training and objectivity to really plumb the information.
If we were to aggregate data across sources for a super pool of online behavioral information and give it to a research institution, we might begin to test theories that would advance online and behavioral marketing. This could conceivably create the basis for a new field of study in online consumer behavior that would provide a bountiful return to the industry in the same way consumer behavior studies have advanced marketing in general for decades.
Researchers who might conduct this work are the same professors who will inspire not only future online marketers but also future online marketing professors. Our industry depends on more and better insights and more and better marketers to help create those insights. We should be able to count on our academic institutions to contribute to this growth.
Originally published on
Behavioral targeting is a broad, growing category that encompasses many tactical elements and vendor options. Although behavioral targeting can satisfy many strategic goals, the approach should match the objective.
Remarketing is a particular type of behavioral targeting, though people often think the two as the same. Remarketing is used to reach existing customers, people who have been to the site or shown interest through site behaviors. It’s an appropriate tactic when the goal is to drive sales or revenue at the lowest possible cost, but it may not be right for finding and converting new customers, if that’s your goal.
You must first align your team on program goals before you can define a behavioral targeting approach. Revenue targets, ROI (define), and cost of marketing goals could be remarketing goals. New to file, new customers, store locator usages, and e-mail sign ups might work for a behavioral targeting program focused on finding new customers. It’s unlikely you can successfully contrive a single approach to both maximize revenues and garner significant new customers. Some goals are just not compatible.
But what is a new customer? The answer partly depends on the data available and on the advertiser’s point of view. A new customer for a multichannel marketer might be someone who has never bought online before, someone who hasn’t bought from any channel in the last X months, or someone who hasn’t received a direct mail piece in the last Y months. There are hundreds of variations. Understanding this unique definition is the first step to creating business goals you can satisfy with behavioral marketing.
Leveraging Existing Customers with Remarketing
If your goal is to fully leverage your existing customers, you should first institute a comprehensive CRM (define) program that includes regular e-mail communications and promotions. The mailings’ flavor and scheduling will vary greatly, depending on your industry, customers, and buying cycles, but a permission-based e-mail program that draws on past buying behaviors is a critical component of a smart behavioral approach.
Once e-mail and other marketing tactics boost site traffic, you can use remarketing programs to help convert visits. Since you’re talking to an audience who already knows you, your creative approach will likely differ from other behavioral marketing programs. You might place less emphasis on brand building and more emphasis on category or product preferences to drive conversions. Creative sequencing can be used to home in on the right offers for particular customers or customer segments, even using reminder ads or orphan ads specific to the customer.
Finding New Customers with Behavioral Targeting
To target new customers based on desirable behaviors, including surfing and searching habits, establish they aren’t in the site’s current cookie pool, then cookie them and serve them appropriate, new-customer ads. If you layer in demo and contextual targeting, expect some crossover with current customers who haven’t been to the site recently. This is a positive thing; you could be creating reactivated customers.
New customers may require more branding-intensive creative approaches. You must introduce the brand and generally move new customers through the awareness and consideration phases of their buying cycle. This may influence your creative ad unit choices, as rich media has been shown to have better branding impact. It’s a good idea to include a clear site URL in new-customer ads so people can easily find your site later.
For a new brand launch or a lesser-known brand, other considerations come into play. For those cases, you may want consider the first several site visits, unless the customer converts, as introductory before you switch to product or direct messaging. It may take some time to build the data set that allows for meaningful segmentation and optimization. For lesser-known or new brands, site traffic quantity and quality may also dictate a comprehensive program, using cheaper media models to drive site traffic to later convert using behavioral targeting.
Trying to Be All Things to All People
If your goal truly is to both maximize revenues and gather lots of new customers, you should craft two separate but synergistic programs. Just make sure you also craft two separate but synergistic sets of expectations for those programs.
Interactive agency NetPlus Marketing has developed a microsite for a Rita’s Water Ice Franchise Company campaign to name a new flavor.
The effort, begun in August, asked in-store customers to taste and name the flavor by voting at http://ritastbd.com. The site design incorporated branding elements that also were used in promotion cups and posters in franchised locations throughout the Lehigh Valley area in Pennsylvania.
“The look that we were going for is sort of unfinished,” said Denise Zimmerman, president and chief strategy officer of NetPlus Marketing, Conshohocken, PA. “When you visit the site, it feels like the creation of something new.”
Within three weeks, Rita’s drew 1,000 responses from its Pennsylvania-based customers. Early on, sales of the new product accounted for 10 percent of overall sales at some locations.
With the rise of Web 2.0, many marketers look to engage clients in a way that benefits business decisions, Ms. Zimmerman said, but it is important to define the goal before choosing the Web 2.0 tactic.
“Rita’s wanted direct customer feedback that would be valuable to the way they run their business,” she said. “That’s why it was such a focused campaign to existing customers mostly.”
Rita’s plans similar campaigns using NetPlus Marketing throughout its 400-plus franchises from the East Coast to Ohio. A winning flavor name will be selected Jan. 15.
“[Brand safety or negative feedback] wasn’t really a concern,” Ms. Zimmerman said. “It was highly controlled since the people are from in-store. They’ve already experienced the product.”
With over 20,000 Pennsylvania citizens’ casting votes, NetPlus Marketing has been selected as a finalist for the Best Places to Work in Pennsylvania awards. Hosted by the Central Penn Business Journal, this sold-out event will recognize 50 medium-sized and 50 large-sized companies in an awards ceremony on November 28, 6:00-9:30 p.m. at the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center in Hershey, PA.
Companies from across the state entered the two-part process to determine the 100 Best Places to Work in PA. The first step evaluated NetPlus Marketing’s workplace policies, practices, philosophy, systems and demographic, which was worth approximately 25 percent of the total evaluation. The second step consisted of an employee survey to measure the employee experience and accounted for 75 percent of the total evaluation.
Co-founders Denise Zimmerman and Robin Neifield consider the recognition a crowning achievement of their hard-earned success. “A focus on people has always been a distinguishing factor at NetPlus and a driving force behind the company’s vision, mission and success,” said co-founder Denise Zimmerman. Neifield adds, “It’s gratifying to know that the team has the same love for this agency that we do, and we will continue to focus on making this a great place to work!”
For more information on the Best Places to Work in PA program, visit http://www.centralpennbusiness.com/events.asp?nID=22&show=details.
About NetPlus Marketing:
NetPlus Marketing is a top 50 full service interactive agency. Celebrating 10 years of success, NetPlus Marketing creates programs that have measurable impact on their clients’ marketing and business objectives. NetPlus has been delivering award-winning, online marketing and advertising programs since 1996 for clients such as Aramark, Charming Shoppes, Inc., Crosstown Traders, Inc., Hanover Direct, Inc., Harriet Carter, Limited Too, Nature Made, Rita’s Water Ice Franchise Company LLC, Toll Brothers, Inc., Universal Studios, and other discerning marketers. To learn more visit: www.netplusmarketing.com
Media Contact:
Morgan McDowell
blast! PR for NetPlus Marketing
919-833-9975 x.12
Email Contact
NetPlus Marketing, a top 50 full-service interactive advertising agency, is pleased to announce that its vice president of marketing, David Larkins, has been chosen as a finalist in the National VP of Sales category of the 2006 Selling Power Sales Excellence awards. David was one of eight finalists in this category and is joined by VPs from Harrah’s Entertainment, WebEx, Mimeo and Careerbuilder.com.
David has also assisted in creating an integrated marketing platform that provides a framework for the successful identification and acquisition of new clients. “Being recognized as a finalist for this award is a true honor,” said David Larkins. “It is a tribute to the commitment of NetPlus Marketing to grow our business by always putting the client first.”
The new awards are jointly presented by Selling Power magazine, the leading sales management publication with 145,000 subscribers in 67 countries, and The Stevie® Awards, which have been hailed as “the business world’s own Oscars” by the New York Post (April 27, 2005).
“Being named a Finalist in The Selling Power Sales Excellence Awards is an important achievement,” said Gerhard Gschwandtner, founder and publisher of Selling Power. “It means that independent business executives have agreed that the nominee is worthy of international recognition. We congratulate David Larkins and all of the Finalists on their achievement.”
Members of the Awards’ Board of Distinguished Judges & Advisors and their staffs will select Stevie Award winners this week from among the Finalists. Finalists were chosen by business professionals worldwide during preliminary judging. Winners will be announced during a gala banquet on Monday, December 4, 2006 at the Westin Casuarina Hotel, Spa & Casino in Las Vegas.
Details about The Selling Power Sales Excellence Awards and the list of Finalists in all categories are available at www.stevieawards.com/sales.
About NetPlus Marketing:
Celebrating 10 years of success, NetPlus Marketing creates programs that have measurable impact on their clients’ marketing and business objectives. NetPlus has been delivering award-winning, online marketing and advertising programs since 1996 for clients such as Aramark, Charming Shoppes, Inc., Crosstown Traders, Inc., Hanover Direct, Inc., Harriet Carter, Limited Too, Nature Made, Rita’s Water Ice Franchise Company LLC, Toll Brothers, Inc., Universal Studios and other discerning marketers. To learn more visit: www.netplusmarketing.com.
Originally published on
Although behavioral marketing is about niche targeting, behavioral targeting networks blanket the Internet in an effort to aggregate enough audience volume to effectively communicate with the finely defined segments or profiles advertisers require. The networks will gladly crow about their reach. They frequently cooperate with each other to extend their reach and make sure they can deliver for advertisers.
Whether the actual number is 85 or 95 percent reach, if you work with multiple large behavioral targeting networks, you can reach most of the Internet audience. Not all of the Internet will match your specific campaign criteria, but if you’ve applied sufficient budget, subject to competitive constraints, most of the people who match your criteria will be included within your ad-served population.
Hooray! You’ve just served targeted ads to a custom-designed population and, assuming you have a big enough budget and your competitors haven’t tied up the appropriate inventory, you can be pretty sure you’re hitting most of the people who fit the bill.
Chances are, however, you aren’t doing behavioral targeting or even online media in isolation, so we will need to appropriately attribute credit for that program and will likely be using some version of third-party ad tracking to do that. Campaign results could be measured by a variety of conversions, but to keep things simple let’s call them sales.
Clicks Are Easy
A profiled audience member is served an ad, clicks on an ad, and completes a sale. Click sales may be easy to track and understand, but they’re also rare. If broad consumer CTRs (define) hover at less than 0.25 percent and you apply site conversion rates once a user gets to the site, you see how the click sale numbers quickly diminish. With a 0.25 percent CTR and a generous 10 percent conversion rate, you’re translating just 0.025 of your ad-served population into a click sale. That’s slim pickings to justify a campaign’s costs, so why are advertisers still flocking to behavioral targeting?
View-through sales.
If only 0.25 percent of the ad-served population are clicking on your ads, 99.75 percent aren’t clicking — but they still may be converting or buying. Anonymous cookies track sales and other conversions to ad exposures during a defined period, even if users never clicked an ad. This allows advertisers to better understand the ad exposure’s value.
People surf for content, not ads, but absorb ad information both knowingly and unknowingly. Companies like Dynamic Logic and InsightExpress have repeatedly proven the brand impact of ad exposures online. Likewise, view-through conversions are a testament to the closing power of ad exposures, even without the click.
Counting Is Hard
But if the networks blanket the Internet and you count view-through conversions from those network ad exposures, then theoretically the networks will get credit for most of your sales by virtue of sheer size. This has multiple implications. Bigger networks get more credit than smaller networks or individual sites. Other factors, including creative and messaging, that may be driving site visits or conversions can get lost in the noise. Double-counting plagues multichannel programs for many reasons, including parallel but separate tracking systems.
Double-counting media and search can be avoided through utilizing a third-party ad server to measure your results. This is a major benefit of using a third-party ad server like Atlas or DoubleClick to serve both your media and search programs. Though these results won’t match Web site analytics, they will help your programs perform better because the media programs won’t take credit for search conversions.
The Consumer Is in Control
In their consideration cycle, consumers tend to stop at a search engine last. Ads play into consumers’ conscious or unconscious choices. When people are ready to buy, however, chances are they’ll return to sites of interest by way of a search. This makes search conversion rates look fabulous because they occur much closer to purchase intent, but it discounts earlier exposures’ value. Double-counting occurs because search gets credit for the close and networks get credit for that same consumer when they touched her earlier in the consideration cycle. Both are important touchpoints that support the advertiser’s goals, but which program gets the sale credit?
Advertisers with extensive media programs tend to count view-through conversions fully because they are either the only audience touchpoint, or make up an overwhelming percentage of their spend. Others retroactively apply sophisticated site-side analytics across all their programs to try to attribute a contribution percentage to each channel and tactic and to eliminate the double-counting that often results from multiple tracking tools.
Whatever approach you take, it’s important to set guidelines so everyone understands how view-through conversions, often a significant proportion of sales, will be counted. Clear optimization depends on clear communication on this point.
An accurate measure of view-through contribution is in the eye of the beholder. No doubt, all those targeted exposures influence consumer behavior but the networks’ reach may lead to an overreaching share of conversion credit by assigning a view-through conversion to any user exposed to network ads. Something between 0 and 100 percent credit is appropriate, depending on the advertiser’s unique environmental, programmatic, and analytic profile. Each advertiser has to find its own answer.
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