Behavioral Targeting: The Next Steps

Behavioral marketing – we’ve seen it go from a gleam in the online marketer’s eye to the buzzword for 2006. The flitting, busy, tech-savvy consumer is much more demanding, after all. Sophisticated campaigns will be necessary to just grab attention, much less call to action.

There are, of course, all the usual worries about the invasiveness and possible identity theft that can result from behavioral targeting, and buying customer trust looks like it’s going to be an issue for a while yet. In December 2005, TRUSTe announced some ‘Recommended Practices for Downloading Software on Users’ Machines’ – and this is definitely the right step forward. Notice and consent – that’s what’s needed prior to any download, and TRUSTe provides a clear set of guidelines.

Jean-Philippe Maheu, CEO of behavioral marketing company Direct Revenue, recently spoke of tracking cookies as well – “I do not believe that tracking cookies are bad for users; however, I do believe companies that use tracking cookies need to be more transparent with consumers about the fact that they do track online behavior”. He also puts the trust challenge in a nutshell – “A great deal of research exists demonstrating that, while our ability to better serve the consumer grows more and more effective, consumers are growing more and more suspicious of our efforts”.

Going ahead, it seems clear that once trust issues begin to resolve, contextual and behavioral targeting will begin working together. This sort of integration will specifically address those situations when either model doesn’t do the job well on its own. Fusion here can only mean even more sophisticated solutions for online ad campaigns.

Personalized, or behavioral search – it may be in the labs now, but it’s going to be here soon. Behavioral profiling is clearly going to be assimilated completely into SEM world. So watch this space…

Moving Pictures: The New Search

If you’re a video creator/provider, there are now specialized video search engines that will pick up your content and make it available for those inveterate searchers that always want more. At a recent Search Engine Strategies Conference, three execs from video search engines - Suranga Chandratillake from blinkx, Karen Howe from Singingfish, and John Thrall from Yahoo! Search - were pretty much unified on one thing: it’s still ‘early days’ for video search, and that is good. Because now is the perfect time to create and optimize content for this nascent, burgeoning category.

All three companies are hard at work enhancing their lists of content partners, providing platforms for video bloggers, support for Media RSS (fostering openness and choice for independent video publishers interested in promoting/syndicating content), and more. The optimizing hysteria is soon to begin, of course: meta information, smart file naming, page content, audio transcripts for Google use – you’ll hear all about it soon.

It’s really interesting to think about if, or how the advertising ballgame will change with this. Right now, video is still mostly linear, which is why the interactive go-anywhere of the web is so popular. But it’s not a far leap to think of non-linear interactive video, is it? So far, we’ve all seen those uber-cool TV ads that are so well made, they just have to transcend the living room and get in our mailboxes. Like that Honda ad, for example.

As far as the corporate space is concerned, it wasn’t so long ago that video search was called ‘non mission-critical’, or that digital video capture had not yet reached ‘critical mass’ within the organization. This year, however, is clearly one where video search itself will reach that critical mass. The merging of presentation delivery tools, Webcasting, and Search technologies takes this further (see Tim Siglin’s commentary).

All of this sounds great, but here’s the usual roadblock: monetization. It seems clear that since Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google Adwords have turned web search into a money-spinner, video analytics is only a few short hops away. Advertisers, after all, have to be able to measure quality and quantity of this emerging audience.

Message Boards: all dried up?

Back in 1997, John Hagel and Arthur Armstrong (McKinsley consultants), published ‘Net Gain’ – a book that tried to show how millions of dollars could be made by aggregating virtual communities. Howard Rheingold (author of Smart Mobs and Virtual Communities), in his BBC address, is, however, frankly skeptical about online communities becoming profit-making industries for entrepreneurs. “The greatest impact of virtual communities”, he says, “will not come from advertising revenues for online chatrooms, but from the new forms of culture that will emerge from virtual communities.”

So, is growing sustainable communities around your organization laborious, time-consuming, and largely thankless? If your message boards and chatrooms are well-designed, expertly moderated, and driven by the commitment to broaden communication with all stakeholders, they can be very effective – but this is actually a cost, with no easily measurable ROI.

A look at the general BB space is largely disheartening. Most message boards devolve very quickly into trollscapes, meaninglessness, and bad behavior. Affinity groups (people with learning disabilities, cancer/sclerosis patients, scholars, etc) that show a strong need to communicate are the few exceptions. Big players like Yahoo, however, have just launched new versions of their message boards, so there’s still some kind of business model here that seems to work.

Highly specific boards with firm codes of conduct, targeted at communities that have the affinity, desire, and drive to communicate – that’s perhaps the way to go. The profit model still doesn’t look too good, though. Contextual banner ads are all very well, but when was the last time you clicked on one?

So for the online marketer, message boards should perhaps be approached from a different perspective altogether. A perspective that hinges purely on the community building aspect till value and sustainability are clearly evident: and only then exploring the possibility of profit.