Targeting is good, but do not take it too far

An article issued by eMarketer states that 58% of 18 to 24 year olds are willing to pay more attention to advertisements if they are more personalized (their source: ChoiceStream). Also, it publishes results of a research done by Ponemon, which states that even 50% of “privacy-sensitive” users would like to to receive promotions and offers that are based on their interests and tastes.

An interesting observation is then made by eMarketer Senior Analyst David Hallerman who states that personalization can be taken too far:

“An advertiser can slice and dice the audience too much,” Mr. Hallerman says. “While the target may then be more accurate, the number of people exposed to the message, in the time needed for the campaign, can become too limited to be effective. Marketers need to remember not to let their desire for the perfect drive out the good.”

At 77 we agree with Mr. Hallerman, who basically says that the costs of a campaign should not exceed the revenues. With increasing behavioural targeting in advertising it will be an effective skill of advertisers to determine how much to personalize a campaign. It must be hard to obtain a good ROI for a campaign built specifically for 70 year old sky-divers from the south-east of Spain, just to give an example.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 6:25 pm and is filed under Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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