Posted by: Matt Shanahan
In the previous post, I looked into the importance of reach and frequency data. Now I’ll focus on intent data as a means for improving ad targeting. This week, the IAB announced that Q1 had $5.9B in online advertising. comScore also announced that Q1 had $2.7B in display advertising. And while display advertising delivers more 95% of the impressions, it garners less than 50% of the revenue because of targeting. Using intent data, display advertising can become more like search advertising in performance and consequently revenue.
Intent is the basis for target quality in search advertising. When 80% of searches performed are informational in nature, ads can be served to answer the question for the users. The ads effectively compete with the content for attention of the user.
Display ads rarely have that impact. In the recent State of News Media report, Pew Research indicated 77% of readers ignore the display ads. When I reflect on my own behavior, I am much more likely to at least consider search ads and regularly ignore display ads, but most publishers have the data at hand to understand my intent.
When I am on AdAge.com, I mostly read topics on digital strategies, but rarely see ads that match my interests. Promoting services, research, or conferences associated with digital strategies would likely have the best impact – especially if they had to do with behavioral targeting. AdAge.com is great, and I’ll continue to use it, but the advertisers are wasting their money on me even though my intent is fairly clear.
Publishers can discern my intent by tracking the which topics are my favorites; which keywords I use in searches; and which pages I bookmark. Armed with this data and the frequency data discussed in the last post, publishers can begin selling their audience much more like search advertising does. In the next post, I’ll look into taking targeting beyond what search provides.
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