In contextual, most networks have to arrive at and sell a limited set of categories. The more targeting you apply, the smaller the audience, so having “bigger buckets” to sell provides scale and efficiency to the sales process.

The easiest thing for networks to do is segment their publisher base on a site basis, regardless of the content on their pages — blah.com is in the “social media” category. The problem is that more and more sites are no longer vertically oriented, they have content about everything! So if they’re selling you contextual then you want to make sure they’re segmenting their inventory on a page-by-page basis. And how are they taking each individual page and arriving at a category? Remember, the broader the category the more useless the targeting.

For most of these networks too, behavioral simply means retargeting — where the category (likely very broad and useless as well) is made up of people who historically went to a page that fit into that category, rather than an affinity-based measurement.

Affinity targeting allows you to reach an audience based on the level of their interest. If you’re an advertiser, you know what audience you’re trying to reach. You know what keywords are working for you on Google too. If you’re targeting exercise enthusiasts and your best-performing AdWords are “running marathon” and “cycling”, then why wouldn’t your behavioral strategy be to target an audience with a heavy affinity to those activities?

What we do (using our own solution) is the following:

We help marketing teams/agencies to

- collect a huge number of social properties where their target communities hang out (ex: teen parenting blogs, frugal people interested in finances, IT security geek, personal injury lawyers, cosmetic professional, green …) – we use our own technology to build help client build these custom lists.
- listen, craft their messages based on what’s going on in relevant conversations
- advertise with laser sharp relevance in these properties CROSS DIFFERENT ad networks.

Our experience is that (beyond Google), if you want to have BOTH fine grain precision, volume and affordable CPM, you’ve to tap several ad networks. Not to mention that the way some ad network build their “vertical/behavioral” lists is not very accurate.

Our clients build campaigns that cross Google Adwords placement targeting, BlogAd, Federated media aso, test with low budget and move with premium networks when it makes sense.

Doing it this way, advertising also becomes the last part of the social marketing process that starts with listening, consumer insight gathering, buzz, message testing and therefore has more social relevance !

That feels right — except its not just among Ad networks — because the networks compete in the very same ecosystem as the publishers direct sales efforts.

In other words, for the first time in the 500 year history of Publishing, Content, especially quality content, is simply NOT king. And when quality content isn’t king, it is no longer economical to spend more money to create it. Which means the end of quality, or at least expensive, publishing.

Isn’t there a moral issue here aside from the Privacy issue? The proliferation of networks with their inherent targeting advantages are causing massive externalities to the content environment. Local journalists are getting laid off by the truckload, as ad networks route around them and capture the bulk of the value created.

Perhaps I am a Luddite on this — the shift caused by technology may be inevitable…like, say, nuclear power, its pretty much impossible to put the technology genie back in the bottle, and you just have to live with the consequences. But the next time one crows about the wonderful ability of ad networks to provide targeting that supercedes the need for quality inventory, consider what you are really crowing about. Its at least a little sad.