MSN PPC Advertising Behavioral and Demographic Targeting: Killer App. or Achilles' Heel? Written by Joel Walsh
Privacy advocates, bloggers, and many people's own low tolerance level for creepiness may damage not just advertising program but MSN itself. MSN PPC Advertising Demographic & Behavioral Targeting Features Overview The coolest thing about new MSN PPC advertising network is that it will incorporate demographic information and "behavioral targeting"--at least that's what many bloggers in marketing field seem to think. MSN will be only search engine advertising program that lets advertisers know roughly what proportion of users who search on a particular keyword are interested in certain market segments, as well as those searchers' demographic breakdown. For instance, MSN might tell you that most of searchers on keyword "monster truck rally" appear to be women aged 50-65, and that they also generally appear to be interested in auto racing and auto parts, but are not more likely than other searchers to buy an automobile online. How will MSN know so much about searchers? Ah, that's interesting part... MSN has quietly been assembling and sorting this information for years in preparation for this venture. That is, it uses cookies to track individual users' web browsing at MSN portal--just as every other business website does. Presumably it will also connect data with information from user profiles from MSN's .NET passport and Hotmail, in order to determine searchers' demographic information such as sex and occupation. Potential resistance to MSN's demographic and behavioral marketing Now, if you use MSN Search, and you also have a .NET passport and/or Hotmail account (as you probably do, even if you've forgotten ever signing up for it back in 1998 when you wanted a free email address to sign up to read New York Times online), all your searches may be matched up with your user information from your .NET passport or Hotmail account--and will be, even if information is kept separate from your personally identifying information. If you actually were honest on your application to those services, that information may include your address, average annual income, personal interests, and a lot of other juicy bits of information any self-respecting marketer or voyeur would love to have. Even if you weren't honest, at very least it might include addresses of people you have exchanged emails with, your IM buddies, and just which newsletters you've signed up for and whice you're sending to junk email folder.
| | Why Your Online Advertising Traffic Leaves as Soon as It Arrives Written by Joel Walsh
Online advertising traffic leaves when advertisers don't make it easy to stick around. Business website owners who buy online advertising often get frustrated when most of their expensive traffic leaves as soon as it arrives--i.e, it "bounces." Why does traffic from online advertising bounce? Think about it: you've done same thing many times. You've searched on a search engine, clicked on a result, then left that page less than ten seconds after you arrived. You did that again and again until you found what you were looking for. You might easily have left a trail of bounces on server logs of a dozen websites, for a dozen website owners to worry over. Why did you keep leaving? Because you weren't finding what you were looking for on those websites within first ten to thirty seconds of arriving. Experience had taught you that you'd find what you were looking for faster clicking on other search results, one of which was bound to have what you were looking for, than sifting through pages of a website that didn't look very promising from start. That's how everyone searches, and how everyone treats online advertising. You have to work with this behavior rather than against it. How to Catch Your Online Advertising Traffic before It Bounces So how do you keep online advertising traffic from bouncing? Think about why you bounced. What made you doubt that website had what you were searching for? If you were using a search engine, you had searched on a keyword--let's say you searched on "small business website content." Without realizing it, you were scanning each page for keyword, "small business website content," or something very close to it.
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