'Net Features : targeting

Eloqua Adds Data-Driven Targeting to Lead Collection Tools

Michael Garrity — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:15:00 GMT

In an effort to add robust, data-driven targeting and testing capabilities to its lead data collection tools, marketing automation software company Eloqua has teamed up with the dynamic targeting and testing platform Get Smart Content.

Get Smart Content’s extensive and powerful targeting and testing features can now be utilized by Eloqua customers to serve dynamic content to anonymous site visitors based on their keyword searches, locations, content interests, site visitation frequency and even their previous interactions with the brand’s website, email and social media profiles.

It also allows the customers to conduct A/B tests on their website and landing page content, meaning they can discover the most effective marketing messages for their different audience segments before turning the content live, thus improving their chance of conversions.

Moreover, Eloqua users are able to serve their content to known leads based on the data gathered by their use of Eloqua’s lead collection tools.

Customers can personalize the individual experience of each of their visitors thanks to the Get Smart Content-Eloqua integration. These experiences can be segmented by Eloqua Segment, Eloqua Lead Score or Eloqua Nurture Mode.

“Get Smart Content extends Eloqua’s capabilities in a way that makes cross-channel marketing even more targeted and therefore relevant to leads,” says Get Smart Content’s director of platform partnerships, Megan Neely.

Create Targeted Posts for Facebook

Allison Howen — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 20:30:00 GMT

Are you ready to publish Facebook posts that target your audience based on information such as their educational background or current relationship status?

Earlier this month, Buddy Media announced the integration of several new targeting features that marketers can leverage when creating Facebook posts. Previously, Facebook allowed marketers to target by location and language. Now the world’s largest social network enables marketers to also target based on age, gender, relationship status, education and workplace.

This enhancement means that marketers will better be able to distribute relevant content to consumers. For instance, marketers can generate engaging content, and then create multiple versions of that post to reach different audiences.

Social media managers can also leverage the new targeting feature in the same way email marketers target segments of their audience. For example, typically marketers don’t send out an email blast to everyone within their company’s email list. Instead, they create targeted lists, which lead to better response and engagement from consumers. This same idea is now possible with Facebook marketing.

The new targeting functionality is already available to Buddy Media clients. However, don't be alarmed if your business's Facebook Page doesn't have the enhanced post targeting feature yet, because as with all Facebook updates, these new targeting options are expected to slowly roll out to all Pages within the next few weeks.

Get Personal with Adobe

Allison Howen — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 11:50:00 GMT

Personalization is an important aspect of marketing – not only does it attract consumers' attention, but it also leaves a lasting impression.

This is why the new Test and Target Adobe Audience Manager integration is a great tool for marketers who are looking to add some personalization into their campaigns. The integration enables users to leverage data from Adobe’s Audience Manager in order to customize consumer experiences across all digital platforms.

According to Adobe's blog, the best way to explain the power of the integration is to explain the value it brings to clients. For example, if a travel company wants to run a campaign that targets business travelers in Los Angelas and New York, the company could leverage Adobe’s Audience Manager to target traits such as high travel frequency, as well as individual signals like search activity on third-party sites for travel, or even include geo-specific information such as LA or NYC-based users. Then, with that information, the marketer could build a NYC/LA Travel Warrior Persona and customize offers or content on landing pages for this specific customer.

Additionally, marketers can also target consumers as they leave the site by serving relevant banner ads on third-party sites – meaning that the integration can also be used for display ad retargeting.

This personalization enables brands to leave a lasting impression on consumers. According to Adobe's blog, implementation of the integration is pretty straightforward and doesn't impact site load times. It is also important to note that the integration is available in Flash, so that (as previously mentioned) marketers can personalize their ad campaigns.

3dcart, Mineful Integration Right on Target

Michael Garrity — Mon, 28 May 2012 11:00:00 GMT

E-commerce software provider 3dcart is tackling another aspect of the Web thanks to a recent partnership with Mineful that will help its customers more effectively target their email marketing campaigns.

Mineful is a software integration that uses the behavioral data of customers to bring them back into a retailer’s store, and 3dcart wants to utilize this technology to drive sales and create more meaningful and sustaining customer relationships.

The inclusion of Mineful software will allow the platform to use sales and customer information to send marketing emails based on a variety of factors, such as timing, content and more.

Purchase data will be sent seamlessly from 3dcart to Mineful, where it will then be converted into “actionable information” that informs retailers how often customers purchase, how many purchases each of them has made, the average sale amount, any increases in purchasing activity and more. All of this data will be visible in a single dashboard.

But the real treat is that this data can be used to configure rules that automatically trigger emails, meaning marketers don’t have to meticulously pore over all of it to figure out which customers they should target. The content of the emails will be fully customizable based on the retailer, and elements like “subject line,” “image,” “body,” etc. will all be separated for easy alterations.

Mineful will also track those who open the emails, click on links or buy products based on the promotion.

Genome Maps Out Targeted Data for Advertisers

Michael Garrity — Thu, 17 May 2012 04:00:00 GMT

Late last year, Yahoo purchased ad targeting and optimization software provider Interclick with hopes to improve its advertisement targeting capabilities. Yesterday, the company announced that it was finally starting to put the platform to use.

That announcement was the Genome platform, an online advertising solution that will combine Yahoo user data with third-party data from Interclick and first-party data from advertisers, plus a premium media footprint that allows marketers to access Yahoo’s inventory of guaranteed and non-guaranteed premium ads; all of this is designed to give marketers a complete, custom audience solution.

The new advertising solution ties together technology, data, analytics and media from Yahoo and Interclick, utilizing Yahoo’s premium media and vast collection of user data in conjunction with Interclick’s unified technology stack, third-party data partnerships and audience and analytics expertise.

Genome will leverage data to improve an advertisers return on investment (ROI), provide actionable insights relevant to campaign objectives and meet industry challenges, including data proliferation, technology fragmentation and outdated planning and buying techniques. Marketers will be able to easily organize and navigate the data ecosystem to build brand value and increase conversions and revenue.

Yahoo is presenting Genome as the culmination of its display ad agreement with Microsoft and AOL, as well as its purchase of Interclick, to offer an audience buying solution with best-in-class targeting and personalization capabilities.

The company anticipates that Genome will be available in July.

Target Users with Incentives by Behavior, Browsing Patterns

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:15:00 GMT

It doesn’t take a mastery of big data to understand that knowing a user’s buying behavior and browsing patterns leads to more (and higher-value) sales. The technologies that are emerging to support this, despite privacy mavens' very vocal objections, are being increasingly utilized by merchants.

Conversion and analytics vendor Spring Metrics, for example, has announced the release of Smart Offers, a “quick-deploy” solution that uses behavioral targeting to present personalized offers to website visitors. The product uses Spring Metrics’ behavioral targeting engine to profile visitors and then acts as an automated sales agent. The company claims that participating sites have increased revenue by over 32 percent in a single month.

As an Internet retailer, that should spark some interest, right?

Smart Offers essentially enables Web merchants to segment the targeting of customers and visitors. For example, a website owner can configure one type of offer to be served to "lurkers"-- those who repeatedly visit a site but haven’t purchased. They can also configure another offer type to target social media visitors by delivering custom incentives to visitors who arrive from a specific source such as a Facebook.

"Smart Offers are designed to help Spring Metrics customers drive more sales and more revenue from their online stores. And our Smart Offers do this automatically 24-hours a day, even while the site owner is asleep," says Shannon Bauman, director of product management. "By understanding the behavior of their customers, and then targeting promotions based on that behavior, website owners not only turn more visitors into buyers, they actually entice the buyers to spend more on each purchase."

Location-based Sentiment Marketing with LocalResponse

Mike Phillips — Tue, 10 May 2011 14:10:00 GMT

A new location-based marketing service called LocalResponse (currently in beta) hopes to capitalize on location and sentiment to connect advertisers with active consumers. While location-based marketing is nothing new, targeting consumers based on their current emotions is what sets LocalResponse apart.

For example, a user might send a tweet to their followers about a disappointing experience with Brand A. In response, LocalResponse can identify that message then help Brand B send an immediate tweet to that user with an offer to try their competing service. Or, a more obvious strategy is to use check-ins from services like Foursquare to alert the user to a coupon.

But the real key to LocalResponse's strategy is understanding language. Whereas most location services rely on specific data (such as a check-in on Foursquare), LocalResponse will target users based on what they actually type on services like Twitter – such as, "leaving X" or "going to X". According to LocalResponse's data, 80 percent of all check-ins on Twitter use natural language such as this. In all, LocalResponse can analyze posts from 200 million users worldwide.

For now, the service can only message Twitter users until other services like Flickr or Foursquare find a way to insert brand messaging (if ever). And that might be a problem, as a small percentage of Twitter users are responsible for the majority of activity. But what might be even trickier is avoiding the “intruder” label. Getting pounded by branded messages simply by mentioning that brand might backfire considerably.

A few brands have already jumped on board, however. They include Coca-Cola's Powerade Zero and "a major telecom".

Nearly 1 in 3 Consumers Surveyed Like Targeted Ads

Internet Advertising : feature — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:33:00 GMT

With the Federal Trade Commission recommending stronger regulations for online advertising, the future of behavioral Web marketing practices is somewhat uncertain right now. The FTC argues that consumers overwhelmingly consider these targeted ads intrusive...(read more)

Site-Side Behavioral Targeting

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:30:00 GMT

SaaS website testing and personalization provider Amadesa announced the launch of an automated, site-side Behavioral Targeting capability.

The algorithm analyzes hundreds of anonymous user data attributes (time of day, day of week, IP address, referring URL, etc.) in real time to learn which campaign promotion, category image or other content element is most compelling and automatically matches the best content to each visitor to drive engagement. This in-session updating captures visitors' actions and behaviors, incorporating them into personas. The value is that merchants are able to act on these finding in real time.

“Amadesa’s site-side Behavioral Targeting algorithm goes above and beyond how most marketers define personalization by incorporating principles more commonly seen in advanced advertising solutions and applying them on marketers’ sites,” explained Rita Brogley, Amadesa’s CEO. “Although the technology is among the industry’s most sophisticated, the integrated user interface makes Behavioral Targeting easy to implement with little follow-up required of the marketer. This truly automated personalization creates micro-segments to engage consumers more quickly and take them deeper into the site to ultimately improve conversions and engagement.”

Behavioral Targeting with AlmondNet CEO Roy Shkedi

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:31:00 GMT

Website Magazine contributor Dante Monteverde discusses behavioral targeting with AlmondNet CEO Roy Shkedi.

WM: Give us the bare bones – how do you define BT?
AlmondNet defines BT as enabling Internet users to see relevant, privacy-sensitive ads wherever they go. Basically, delivered ads are based on Internet users’ recently demonstrated purchase-intent behavior.

Where did the need for AlmondNet materialize?
We recognized that the Internet advertising market was inefficient. Most advertising inventory is unsold or sold for very low rates, and moreover, most delivered ads are untargeted. We saw a solution. By enabling the delivery of targeted ads to consumers wherever they go, we help all online constituencies--- consumer see relevant, privacy-sensitive ads, data providers receive incremental revenue, publishers sell their ad space for a higher price, advertisers reach their target audience.

What are the top three factors that make AlmondNet different from your competitors?
1) Largest aggregator and distributor of data online;
2) Focused on purchase-intent data that delivers conversions for advertisers;
3) Pro-active approach to privacy

What are “Post-Search” ads and how do they benefit consumers, advertisers and media owners?
Post-search ads are behaviorally-targeted ads delivered to consumers wherever they go based on their recently conducted search or demonstrable purchase-intent behavior. Consumers benefit from relevant, privacy-sensitive ads wherever they go, instead of irrelevant ads. Advertisers reach a target audience that is in purchasing mode, wherever that audience goes, for a lower price than on search engine pages and with minimal clutter and competition from competing advertisers. Media-owners receive a higher price for their inventory, since they are able to deliver targeted ads for a reasonable price instead of delivering lower-priced run of site ads or no sold ads at all.

Behavioral Targeting advertising often has negative connotations; how does AlmondNet allay privacy concerns?
We allay privacy concerns on a few different fronts. First, AlmondNet is a member of three self-regulatory organizations (Network Advertising Initiative, Truste, Internet Advertising Bureau) and exceeds the privacy principles adopted by each of them. We feel it’s important for companies like us to be ingrained within these groups.

We also uphold more than a few privacy polices internally. We do not collect personally-identifiable information. We use non-persistent cookies that expire after 60 days. And, AlmondNet does not permit its media owner partners to use AlmondNet data for more than 30 days OR to link it with personally-identifiable information of any kind.

We also have a privacy officer that audits the privacy policies of all data provider partners and requires insertion of the NAI consumer opt-out and other policy modifications prior to integration. AlmondNet requires all of its partner data providers to insert an NAI opt-out link in the privacy policy of all sites where consumer data is collected.

We’ve always taken a pro-active approach to privacy. For example, AlmondNet was the first company to call for an industry-wide “opt-out within every behaviorally-targeted” banner.

Are there any challenges to deploying your technology correctly?
Integration with AlmondNet is seamless for data providers and media-owners.

How do you emphasize privacy to new partners?
We require all data provider partners to sign a contract verifying the following:
-They will not pass personally-identifiable information to AlmondNet;
-They will amend their privacy policy according to AlmondNet recommendations;
-They will insert an opt-out link in their privacy policy

We also require all data distributors to sign a contract verifying that:
-They will post an appropriate website privacy policy;
-They will not merge AlmondNet data with personally-identifiable information;
-They will not use AlmondNet data for more than 30 days;

What do you see as a next big trend in BT in the next five or ten years?
Behaviorally-targeted and other data-driven ads will become commonplace (i.e. the majority of delivered ads online) as they are the only solution for monetizing content that is difficult to monetize via contextual means.

Are there are any other trends in BT that you feel are important to website owners?
We’d like to emphasize to website owners that the behavior of their users within their site is valuable information that they should be monetizing outside their site via partnerships with companies such as AlmondNet. No website should allow any ad network or other company to drop cookies on its users within its website and use that information elsewhere without compensating the website. Websites spend lots of money to drive traffic to their sites. It is time they started leveraging the behavior of their site visitors when those site visitors are off their sites--- 99% of their time!