Chicago, Ill. – APRIL 11, 2008 –ValueClick Media, a division of ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK), recently gathered a panel of experts and nearly 100 online marketing professionals, representing marketers and agencies, to debate the most critical aspects of behavioral targeting at the Hard Rock Hotel in Chicago.
In an effort to cover this exciting area of online marketing from all angles, the panel featured an industry analyst (David Hallerman, senior analyst, eMarketer), a behavioral targeting product expert (Joshua Koran, vice president, targeting and optimization, ValueClick, Inc.), a brand marketer (Julian Chu, Director of Acquisition Marketing, Discover) and an interactive agency executive (Sam Wehrs, Digital Activation Director, Starcom).
Kicking off the event, David Hallerman shared new data from eMarketer suggesting that behavioral targeting ad spending growth will be far stronger than for total Internet advertising. Expected to reach $4.8 billion in 2012, behavioral targeting ad spending will then make up 9.4 percent of total Internet advertising, up from 3.4 percent this year.
Given the rapid proliferation of service providers touting the service, the group discussed and agreed on the need for delineation between the different approaches to behavioral targeting. While it is important to understand the difference between retargeting – which Hallerman referred to as “reactive” – and the more complex models, the panel agreed it is also critical to understand the differences within the more sophisticated group of behavioral targeting approaches, and Joshua Koran shared three designations: “clustering,” “custom business rules” and “predictive attributes.”
The “clustering” approach assigns each visitor to one and only one segment while the “custom business rules” approach offers marketers the ability to target visitors who have done X events in Y days, with Boolean operators of AND, OR and NOT. Finally, the “predictive attributes” approach automates the assignment of interest categories based on the visitor activities that best correlate with performance; thus, the system is continuously learning to identify multiple interest attributes per visitor.
Another notable takeaway was the need for a focus on the customer experience and the corresponding importance of demonstrating value to customers when serving behaviorally targeted ads. Julian Chu offered three questions marketers must address to make behavioral targeting a valuable experience for customers instead of merely serving the ads, which would unavoidably become customer annoyance: How are you going to do it? Where is it going to happen? What is going to happen at that time?
Presented as part of ValueClick Media’s ongoing Media Lounge education event series, this event – The Changing Behavioral Targeting Landscape – as well as the discussion itself underscored the importance of education relative to this increasingly important online advertising technique.
ValueClick Media, which has offered retargeting since 2005, recently announced the public beta of a new behavioral targeting product based on the predictive approach. A full release of the product will be available later this year.
About ValueClick Media
ValueClick Media is one of the world’s largest and most effective performance advertising networks, reaching more than 75 percent of the U.S. Internet audience across 13,500 quality sites. Leveraging its extensive reach, advanced targeting capabilities, superior optimization technology and expertise, ValueClick Media drives scalable results for advertisers and revenue for publishers through its display advertising, lead generation and video solutions.
About ValueClick, Inc.
ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK) is one of the world’s largest online marketing services companies, offering comprehensive and scalable solutions to deliver cost-effective customer acquisition for advertisers and robust revenue streams for publishers. ValueClick’s performance-based solutions allow customers to accomplish their objectives through multiple online marketing channels, including affiliate and search marketing, display advertising, lead generation, ad serving and email technology, and comparison shopping. ValueClick brands include Commission Junction, ValueClick Media, Mediaplex and PriceRunner. For more information, please visit www.valueclick.com.
