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Special
Media Issue
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The
importance of targeting in online advertising
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Sanjeev
Gadre
Business Manager, Hughes Software Systems. |
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As
the Internet makes its presence felt in India1, it has
begun to attract the attention of advertisers. Various
researches indicate that Indians with access to the
Internet spend a considerable percentage of their total
media consumption time on the Internet2. It is thus
natural that an increasing number of advertisers are
keen to understand the why and how of Internet advertising.
In a year of operations, we at RightServe have had significant
experience and learning in planning and delivering online
advertising campaigns. This article hopes to present
this learning..
This new advertising medium brings with it its own distinct
advantages and set of rules for success. The Internet,
as an advertising medium, scores over the conventional
media on two counts:
* In its ability to provide for interactive communication
where the advertiser can establish a two-way communication
with the consumer.
*In its ability to target communication to a
specific target segment.
It is imperative, therefore, that an advertiser leverages
these two advantages to the maximum extent possible.
The element of interactivity in online communication
is largely a domain for creative planning and execution
and as such beyond the scope of this article.
The Internet Differs From Conventional Media Because...
Conventional media like press and TV are push/broadcast
in nature. All consumers of a particular edition/issue
or channel get exactly the same information. It is then
left for each consumer to ‘consume’ only such information
as she needs or finds relevant. Thus, the challenge
for an advertiser is to choose such editions/issues
or channels where most consumers for that particular
media vehicle are also target consumers for the advertiser’s
brand. The ascent is, therefore, on reducing wastage.
The Internet, on the other hand, is pull/multicast in
nature. Each consumer of a website can choose to visit
(or not visit) a particular site, and thus the consumer
pulls desired information. The cost of consuming multiple
vehicles (sites) on the Internet is almost negligible
compared to conventional media. Further, it is possible
for a consumer to have a personalized view of a particular
website i.e. view only desired information in a desired
layout. A classic example is a web-based email service.
A consumer views only her emails and arranged in a manner
(ascending by date or new messages at top) that she
chooser3. The challenge, therefore, for the advertiser
is to ensure that his communication is relevant and
part of the information pulled by the consumer.
1 Research done by Nasscom (January
2001) shows that in India there are 5.5 million Internet
users with 1.5 connections.
2 According to IRS 2000, on weekdays
the time spent on the Net is 1:30 hrs as against press,
which is at 1:13 hrs and TV, which is 2:21hrs.
3 The level of personalization varies
with sites. Some like My Yahoo! (http://my.yahoo.com)
provide for a high level of personalization while others
like Times of India (http://www.timesofindia.com) provide
for minimal personalization.
Two Levels of Internet Media Plans...
While planning for advertising on the Internet, planners
create two levels of plan. One plan identifies the sites,
particular sections within those sites (sports, entertainment
etc.) and particular position on pages (top banner,
side button etc.). This planning is governed by an understanding
of the traffic pattern (e.g. youth, women, NRIs, young
professionals etc.) that the site would attract, which
is governed by the content type, quality etc. This is
pretty similar to the process that is followed while
planning for conventional media.
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Your
product offer must be compelling. No amount of marketing
budget can sell a product that is bad or not needed.Also,
your advertising creative must be attractive. Boring
ads are just that, boring. They add no value to the
brand; in fact, they may actually reduce the value.
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However,
it is the planning at the second
level that differentiates the Internet from other conventional
media. Internet plans allow for real-time targeting of
communication based on various parameters. These parameters
are such that their value can be determined only in real
time i.e. as it happens. Some of the parameters that are
used for targeting are geography of the visitor (country/city),
time of visit (morning/afternoon/late night), day of visit
(Monday/weekend).
The ability to ‘read’ these parameters in real time and
then deliver an appropriate communication is what makes
the Internet a powerful advertising medium. Take a nationwide
pizza delivery chain. It may use geography and time of
day/day of week targeting very effectively. To start with,
advertisements may be delivered only on weekdays as a
majority of Internet consumers connect using office infrastructure.
Additionally, the highest number of impressions may be
delivered during the 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. time band
to catch the ‘hungry-and-planning-for-lunch’ consumer.
The relevance of the communication may be greatly improved
if different creative is delivered based on the city of
the consumer, so that the base message could remain the
same but the ‘phone-number-to-call’ could be that of the
visitor’s city.
The Leverage of Course Correction...
Internet plans also enjoy high levels of course correction
that are unheard of in conventional media. Extending the
pizza delivery chain example, a quick analysis after,
say, the first week of activity may reveal that:
*Visitors to a certain set of sites
are not clicking on the banners
*Visitors from City A, C and D seem
uninterested in pizza as lunch
*Visitors from other cities prefer
pizza not only for lunch but also as an evening snack.
These observations can trigger course correction for the
original plan. Impressions delivered on the ‘non-performing’
sites and to visitors from City A, C and D are reallocated
to increase the impressions delivered to visitors from
other cities and increase the number of impressions delivered
in the new time band of 4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Such regular
course correction provides for ‘better-bang-for-the-buck’
Internet advertising plans.
Case Study...
A leading portal in India aims at developing the ‘learn-at-home’
concept. There are two sets of target group: IT-aware
i.e. training managers and IT novices i.e. students.
The first level plan arrived at a list of
websites that were frequented by the target segment. A
total of 13 creatives were served in the first week. The
main objective of the campaign was to enable a high CTR.
The graph above indicates how online planning and course
correction led to a dramatic improvement in the CTR over
the four-week period, up from 0.83 per cent to 1.63 per
cent, an improvement of almost 100 per cent. This was
achieved by correlating various parameters like creative,
site content, time band, city etc.
But a Note of Caution...
I would like to end the article on a note of caution.
One must never forget that certain basic principles of
advertising planning apply to all media, including the
Internet. Let me try enumerating them:
1. ‘Know’ your target segment; who
it is, why it would want to buy your product4 and how
it would decide on your brand over competition.
2. Your product offer must be compelling.
No amount of marketing budget can sell a product that
is bad or not needed.
3. Your advertising creative must be
attractive. Boring ads are just that, boring. They add
no value to the brand; in fact, they may actually reduce
the value.
4. Very little advertising spends result
in instantaneous purchase. Most of thespend helps build
the customer’s knowledge about the product category, the
brand and its superiority over competition — and hence
purchase always lags behind the spend by a finite time.
Though the above list seems self-evident, we have advertisers
who blame the Internet for the failure of their campaign
when the cause of the failure actually lies in not adhering
to one or more of the principles mentioned above. Advertisers
will do themselves and their brands injustice if they
write off the Internet without making an honest judgement
of whether the principles mentioned above are applied
for their online advertising campaigns.
( For the purpose of this article the word ‘product’
will include both products (as in a car or a soap) and
services (as in hotel or a cab service) |
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