Sunday, October 19, 2008

Web 3.0 Advertising - Targeting the right audience


I was lucky enough to StumbleUpon a keynote speech given by Amiad Solomon, from Peer39, from the Web 3.0 Conference in Santa Clara. Amiad, and Peer39, specialise in Semantic Advertising solutions, and he addresses the idea of how the semantic web can be applied to improve advertising targeting accuracy.

Essentially the increasing availability of data and information lends itself to a more complete online identity of each user. By allowing the 'net' to 'know' more about you, you allow your interactive experience to be more personalised. However, when it comes to advertising the overriding issue is not actually about getting the “right product to the right person at the right time”. At least not anymore.

Nowadays online advertising isn’t having trouble with targeting, it’s simply a case of getting people to see your advertising. Generally speaking, all in all targeting works, and so the reason that online media consumption and ad spend differ so much across brands, is that advertisers have not cracked an effective model to create demand for products that people don’t know they want.

So, put very simply, if people don’t see your ad, it doesn’t matter how good or bad your targeting effectiveness is.

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