ChoiceStream

As the effective mixing and mining of audience data becomes increasingly important to online advertisers, the role of behavioral targeting has grown more central, finds eMarketer. Its estimated that online advertisers in the US will spend more than $1.1 billion on behaviorally targeted advertising this year and – by 2014 - will spend $2.6 billion, representing steady growth rates of about 20% from 2009 through 2014. The figures include spending on online ads displayed to a select audience whose intentions are revealed by Website or ISP tracking data, audience segmentation or predictive analysis. Behaviorally targeted ad dollars will rise as a proportion of online display spending from 14.2% in 2010 to nearly 20% by 2014, when ads targeted based on interests or intentions will account for 7.6% of total US online ad spending.Read the full article

With so much attention on consumer data from mainstream media, it’s become almost impossible to talk about real-time bidding and audience targeting without finding yourself in a privacy debate. After all, the exploding availability of data is key to the adoption and success of real-time audience optimization. On the other hand, the commoditization of data also has privacy advocates on edge. Today, industry partners and marketers walk a fine line between leveraging data for more effective audience targeting and ensuring consumer privacy protection. As an industry, we should understand the lessons learned in dealing with privacy issues. Among the examples of online businesses who have successfully leveraged consumer data to reach those same consumers with more relevant information are Netflix and Amazon. No one seems to complain about their use of personal information as these companies provide a data-driven customer experience that users find delightful rather than intrusive. Using collaborative filtering technology in their recommendation engines, which work primarily by extrapolating large numbers of data about people sharing similar product interests, they present recommendations to consumers in a social influence metaphor. Psychologically, this can be comforting to consumers because they associate this culturally with belonging to a group. Maybe online advertisers and marketers can use the same approach proposes this article. Click the link above for more information.Read the full article

Ecommerce is now almost unrecognizable from even a few short years ago when the priority for retailers was on usability, content and structure, and creating a scalable, high performance online presence. Forward thinkers, such as Amazon, have more recently demonstrated the powerful commercial advantages of personalized online shopping and changed the rules when it comes to customer engagement. The online marketplace is very crowded so the key to getting noticed is in differentiating your brand. By using personalization, e-retailers can measure and reward the online behavior of consumers which drives loyalty and builds trust, and underlines the unique elements of a brand. In addition research shows that eCommerce personalization and recommendation tools positively drive key metrics like revenue, conversion rates, average transaction value and time-on-site. According to this bylined article by a leading exec with UK company hybris, consumers “want recognition, recommendations, and value guidance, based on their individual interests and preferences. They are looking for a transparent, optimal experience that enables them to find what they’re looking for and, in the process, helps them discover products and solutions they may not necessarily have considered.” The exec notes that “today’s personalization technologies enable online retailers to extract commonalities, associations and cause-and-effect relationships to seamlessly and automatically deliver recommendations appropriate to any environment. And the world of online personalization looks set to become even more sophisticated in the near future – employing dynamic pricing and re-targeting to boost margins and convert visitors to loyal long-standing customers.”Read the full article at Internet Retailing

When buyers make a purchase online directly, companies can learn a lot about an individual's profile and preferences. You can make a deeper and meaningful relationship online with your consumers -- and now, with the general availability of content management, email, e-commerce and social commerce technologies, you can easily maintain and control the brand experience. During the slow economic recovery, it has become business-critical to conduct more business using digital channels: websites, social media and email. The online channels are not exclusive to commerce, as more customer service transactions are flowing through these channels. If channel management is piecemeal -- that is, if the customer experience is not delivered in a coherent manner -- then the brand can become diluted and suffer. Technology advancements have made it possible to build an online presence that ties your website together with commerce, enables social dimensions to help you better engage customers, and gives you the opportunity to better upsell and cross-sell your products -- while servicing customers with the knowledge that you are delivering a compelling and complete customer experience. This article from eCommerce Times spells out seven tips to make your digital communications the cornerstone of your online sales strategy.Read the full article

By improving how they engaged consumers with targeted e-mail marketing campaigns, retailers boosted e-mail-driven sales by 2.5% year-over-year without causing a lot of customers to opt out of e-mails. That’s the conclusion of e-mail services provider e-Dialog after a review of holiday 2009 campaigns conducted by 38 of its clients. e-Dialog notes e-mail marketers benefited from two general developments in the 2009 holiday shopping season: Marketers used consumer data more effectively to tailor e-mail campaigns to segments of consumers; and there was an increased expectation among consumers that they would receive more e-mails during the holidays, along with their willingness to accept those extra e-mails as long as they were relevant to their interests. Read the full article at Internet Retailer

Why is “attribution” so vital for marketers and advertisers? Simply put, attribution-based optimization takes one more step, monitoring actions taken to increase efficiency and reduce waste. But using the “last click” means to measure impact/effectiveness is certainly not the way to go. According to this bylined piece in Adotas, the attribution funnel (similar to the sales funnel) has a wide mouth and a narrow bottom. The funnel contains all touchpoints of individual users, but more importantly, it can be divided into three categories: Introducers, Influencers and Converters. Knowing the impact these three categories have individually increases the reliability of any attribution model. Read the full article at Adotas

Over the holidays, shoppers in search of deals didn’t discriminate between channels, according to new research from display ad provider Eyeblaster. “For marketers, knowing that consumer habits online mirror the offline channel shows that the combination of display advertising and e-commerce resonates with the end user,” said an Eyeblaster exec. The research analyzed conversions from more than 10 billion impressions and thousands of ads during the holiday season (“conversions” in this research represent a range of actions an advertiser would like the consumer to take - including but not limited to - completing a transaction online). Eyeblaster outlined several unique opportunities that digital channels present marketers, including (1) targeting based on on-site behavior; (2) sequenced messaging with tailored ads according to projected path to conversion; and (3) coupling the buying power of ad exchanges with the real time bidding potential of demand side platforms.Read the full article at MediaPost

The National Retail Federation is predicting that retail industry sales will increase 2.5% this year over 2009. Last year, total retail sales declined 2.5% over the prior year. The increase in retail sales is attributed to factors such as the housing market and employment picture. Those developments should bolster consumer confidence throughout the year, according to the NRF. Rosalind Wells, chief economist at the NRF said in a statement, “While we still expect shoppers to continue to be frugal with their discretionary spending, retailers will soon be able to reap the benefits of leaner, smarter inventories and a year and a half of pent-up consumer demand.”Read the full article at DM News

The U.K. edition of Marketing Week declares that “Retailers allow up to 60% of potential customers to slip through numerous gaps in their multichannel purchasing strategies, and must better integrate their online and high street operations.” The article quotes a study by GSI Commerce International which asked more than 2,000 men and women above the age of 18 about their buying habits. The findings should be seen as a wake-up call for multichannel merchants: (1) just 40% of consumers would visit a brand’s website if they couldn’t find a product in-store while (2) 69% of survey respondents claim they would log onto another brand’s website to compare prices on the same product if they had been unable to find it in a store. The simple truth, according to GSI’s Hosein Moghaddas, is that “retailers are losing customer because they can’t link their in-store and online shopping together.” The key to getting the right mix on the shopfloor and a brand’s website is “staying tuned in to core customers”, argues Moghaddas. Keeping in touch with and analyzing the purchasing behaviors of regular customers should help brands devise a multichannel strategy that minimizes “customer churn”, he says. Read the full article at Marketing Week (UK editi

Trying to ward off regulators, the advertising industry has agreed on a standard icon — a little “i” — that it will add to most online ads that use demographics and behavioral data to tell consumers what is happening. Most major companies running online ads are expected to begin adding the icon to their ads by midsummer, along with phrases like “Why did I get this ad?” The Interactive Advertising Bureau, which is involved in the self-regulation effort, has already begun an online campaign to explain the behavioral tactic to consumers. The unveiling of the symbol comes amidst a fierce debate about online privacy that has the FTC, lawmakers and consumer privacy advocates pushing for tighter controls on the use of consumer information that is used to serve behaviorally targeted ads. Stay tuned to see if this move placates the opponents of targeted advertising.Read the full article at NY Times