Contextual Marketing

contextual marketing

From TechTarget 27-04-07

Contextual marketing is an online marketing model in which people are served with targeted advertising based on terms they search for or their recent browsing behavior. By tying the ads users see to their demonstrated interests, advertisers hope to decrease user annoyance with online marketing and, simultaneously, increase clickthrough and conversion rates. Google's AdSense program, for example, is a straightforward version of contextual marketing, in which ads are displayed based on the terms that the user searches for.

In a more sophisticated application, contextual marketing uses an approach called behavioral targeting to serve relevant advertising. Here's an example: The user searches for mid-size car reviews, reads one or two reviews and then reads an article about fuel-efficient models. Next, the user might visit a general news site and see, to his surprise, ads for hybrid vehicles and biofuels.

To the unsuspecting user, the appearance of ads relevant to his interests -- on seemingly unrelated sites -- may seem like pure coincidence, or even synchronicity. In fact, however, each time the user performs a search, reads an article or clicks on an ad, a cookie stored on the computer tracks the activity, which is used to create a behavioral profile of the consumer for marketing purposes.

Behavioral targeting is usually conducted throughout so-called "ad networks" of affiliated Web sites. TACODA, Inc., for example, is an Internet marketing company that oversees an ad network of 4,500 sites. According to the company's chairman, David Morgan, TACODA sees 80 percent of the U.S. online population 50 times a month, through sites including Cars.com, CBS Sports and the Wall Street Journal.

MORE INFO:
> ContextualMarketing.com provides an article called 'Everything You Need To Know About Contextual Marketing.'
> SearchCRM.com offers a chapter download, 'Market-Driven Thinking: Achieving Contextual Intelligence.'
> Ask.com is launching new sponsored contextual advertising listings and will go live the week of May 21st.
> A Harvard Business School journal article, Contextual Marketing: The Real Business of the Internet, explains more about the practice.

Engagement Marketing

This is a presentation from Cord Silverstein, a marketing blogger (Marketing Hipster). This was presented to the American Marketing Association.

There is also a link to a podcast (mp3 file) by David Weinberger at the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council's Social Media Cluster this afternoon (24-004-07) titled "Taking Back the Internet: How Social Media will Transform Media and Institutions". It was followed by an 80 minute discussion period that involved questions and comments from many of the 35 or so attendees and lots more from David.

Discussion:
1. Do you think this is an important issue for web marketing?
2. How does this view differ from the conventional marketing approach?

Google and Privacy

Google has recently acquired DoubleClick, a leading on-line based advertising company. Concerns have been expressed about the dangers of one organisation having access to a vast amount of personal information.

Google to Buy DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion

Google in Privacy Hot Seat
"Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick will give one company access to more information about the Internet activities of consumers than any other company in the world."

How Paranoid Should I Be about Google?

Tuesday, April 17, 2007 12:06 PM PT Posted by Edward N. Albro

What I search for: Google's cookie lasts for decades and could be keeping a record of every search query I submit.

What Web sites I've visited since 1996: DoubleClick's been around longer than Google and has probably had its own tracking cookie on every computer I've used virtually since I started browsing the Net.

What I write and read in email: I have two Gmail accounts with a total of 26,389 messages, all of which have been scanned by Google so they can place contextual ads within them.

What I'm doing when: Google Calendar doesn't have all of my activities, but it's got a lot.

What's on my hard drive: Google Desktop indexes the contents of my hard drive and mixes search results from that index in with my Web search results.

Where I go: I've got Google's great Maps app on my Treo and use it frequently to get directions to new places.

What I'm producing: So far, I've only dabbled with Google's Docs & Spreadsheets applications,

1. How is DoubleClick different from Google?
2. What can Google gain from this acquisition?
3. What can be done to protect privacy in this situation?

Google Privacy Statement Highlights
DoubleClick Privacy Statement

FUTURE FOCUS - NEW CYBERSPACE WORLDS

SBS
08:30 pm
FUTURE FOCUS - NEW CYBERSPACE WORLDS
A booming business has sprung up at the crossroads where virtual worlds and the real world meet. In auctions inside these realms, imaginary real estate and virtual islands are selling for hundreds of thousands of real dollars. Weapons and characters are also being exchanged every day for a few dozen gold coins. Millions of ‘gamers' worldwide spend on average 30 hours a week playing in these boundless realms, creating their own new personalities as players in the game (known as ‘avatars'). (From France, in English, French and Mandarin) CC WS SMS Alert Code: 0115

http://www.sbs.com.au/whatson/index.php3?progdate=17:04:2007
The show will appear on SBS on Tues, 17th April.
We thought this could be a great program to watch re: virtual worlds-
Posted by Vicky and Josie yes, on a Saturday night study binge! How sad :(