TRP: How can advertisers use data to better target their audience?
DJ: To better target consumers, advertisers need to buy media at prices based not only on their audience's broad demographics, but also their personal tastes and interests. Whilst set algorithms are a good start, advertisers need to use more granular level targeting. By focusing on the quality, not quantity of consumer data, they will be empowered to segment audience groups down to an individual user level and target them more effectively.
Getting data to a point where it is as useful as it can possibly be will not just happen overnight. Proper data analysis will need to be fine-tuned over time until advertisers have a tried and tested method that learns from customer behaviour to deliver on results.
TRP: What is search retargeting?
DJ: Search retargeting is a revolutionary digital ad technique that takes an anonymised individual's recent search data from search engines likes Google, Yahoo! or Bing, or an on-site search box, to identify their intent to buy something. By then looking at the relationship between particular keyword phrases and other variables, like time lag between actions (recency) and browsing context, a relevant ad that corresponds to the user profile can be served.
TRP: Why not leave advertising to machines altogether?
DJ: Advertisers need to remember that consumers have different reactions and clients have different campaign requirements. It's therefore essential that advertising campaigns are being developed based on actual customer behaviour rather than generalised data sets. The best advertisers will be those who can balance automated bidding systems with intelligent campaign optimisation, creating more valuable insights than ever before and ultimately adding more value in the marketing chain.
About Dominic Joseph
Dominic is the co-founder and CEO of Captify, a company pioneering search retargeting in the European advertising market. Captify is a British business and was founded in 2011. Supported by its own purpose-built unique technology stack, Captify now dominates its sector of the industry and has a global customer base including American Express, Sony, Samsung and Warner Brothers.
