Online Advertising 2.0 – The Evolution to Engagement
ADOTAS — As we increasingly evolve to a world of on-demand content that’s available to consumers anytime and anywhere, eyeballs are shifting to new mediums with new engagement capabilities.
Over the last several years, we’ve seen an acceleration of changing media consumption habits, specifically transitioning to the Internet as a primary source of content versus print publications, live television and radio. The traditional high-reach advertising platforms are finding their captive audiences fragmenting, and marketers are faced with the challenge of how to reach and engage consumers in new mediums.
There’s no question that people are more technologically savvy and connected than ever. More people are spending their leisure time on social sites such as Facebook, MySpace and other social networks and communities. eMarketer found last year nearly 80 million people, 41 percent of the U.S. Internet user population, visited a social network site at least once a month. In fact, it was recently found that more people visit Facebook on a daily basis than watched the Super Bowl this year. As audiences have embraced social networks, marketers have followed suit—spending $2 billion advertising on social networks in 2008, according to eMarketer—but what’s the right approach to targeting these users and accelerating the shift to effective online marketing?
Given social networks’ rapid growth, it makes sense for marketers to have a strategy to reach Facebook users, but creating a generic presence on Facebook is about as targeted as focusing on U.S. consumers in general. As with any marketing strategy, you have to determine who to target and where to find them. What’s the goal of your campaign – are you trying to reach a specific gender, age group or shared interest? By establishing these base-level criteria you can begin to source online communities and groups that will naturally interact around your brand.
Courting Consumers: We know consumers are spending more time online, and better tracking and measurement tools tell us where those consumers are (hint: within social communities) and what they are doing. So it’s a matter of figuring out how best to interact with them, knowing that display ads alone are not the solution. At best, rich media or behavioral targeting incrementally increases the performance of banner ads. Put banners into a social environment and performance takes a step back because users are completely immersed in the activity of the site and banner ads are generally not part of that social experience. So how do marketers capture attention online? It’s not about interrupting or pushing a product on a user. By integrating branded content into the overall user experience, marketers enable community members to organically choose how they want to interact with a brand from within the framework of their social experience.
Smarter Targeting: Behavioral targeting has the right idea but the implementation is done primarily through display ads. Instead, marketers should consider reaching groups with a shared interest across multiple platforms. Social networks, blogs, widgets, mobile applications and Web sites all engage community members regardless of the medium. Brands can be integrated seamlessly by addressing the needs of a specific user group, while leveraging the subject around which community members are engaged. In short, behavioral targeting using psychographics and/or stated interests can be much more relevant and effective within the confines of a social environment.
For example, we’ve found that sports and TV fans have a particularly broad range of interests. A Pittsburgh Steelers fan could be a teacher, corporate executive or a flower shop owner. What connects the teacher and corporate exec is what should bring the brand to the conversation. The Steelers fan participating in a Steelers community is more likely to click through an integrated section of the community to purchase tickets to the next game or a play a quiz that leverages the passion they feel as a Steelers fan. Leveraging that shared passion across the community enables a brand to make itself relevant to a group of Steelers fans much more than any sort of generic profiling allows.
Connecting with the Community: The state of the economy and shrinking marketing and advertising budgets may actually help accelerate the shift to more effective online marketing. We’ve already seen agencies move away from separate digital groups in an effort to bring all facets together with a 360-degree approach. This means traditional, offline-media-planning strategies will start to incorporate digital strategies and tactics as integral parts of the solution instead of stand-alone initiatives.
Ultimately, conversations will continue to exist within social networks, on blogs and in the Twittersphere regardless of interaction by brands. The brands that connect and remain connected with user-generated communities will be those that integrate ad content directly within the user experience through the interface, discussions and contests.
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Reader Comments.
This is all well and good, but does it really work and how do you track it? Or is this just conjecture?
Great article Kevin, and something I feel equally passionate about: I actually have been on the road discussing “courting the consumer” where I unpack the why and how
http://engagements.deandonaldson.com
I think the notion of “engagement” is being reduced to interactivity as opposed to emotional connection essential for brand building. Engagement should be more akin to perception changes then mere tangible physical touch points, especially when the true effects are not always seen in the immediacy, but later on, and cross-channel – for example a display campaign driving search, or buzz in a social network.
We also need “environments” unpacking a lot more. It not efficient to discuss formats and features when there is a huge difference in consumer experience in mail to news or entertainment channels, let alone social networks. Time spent in page, to openness to advertising, etc create a minefield of problems that intelligent insights can assist, but only if designers are willing to listen and stop sticking the same ad everywhere and then getting upset when precious few click on them…
Ultimately the goal of online advertising is getting the conversion. Cost per Action or CPA is an important part of the marketing campaign to ensure you stretch your dollar and get the most ROI possible.
I agree with Dean. It is really about ENGAGEMENT… Do you really want advertisers in your face 24/7? Selling something that the audience already buys? Hopefully the paradigm will shift to something more mutually meaningful and rewarding.
Engagement is theoretically higher on social media sites, but intuitively, it seems that the Facebook or MySpace audience isn’t consumer-driven. As far as measurable engagement goes – emotional or otherwise – ROAS is the metric that matters.
Interesting article – Google just released a whitepaper saying that advertising in their content network is more cost effective than search ads (which generally convert better than content): http://www.ppchero.com/highlights-from-googles-content-network-cpa-whitepaper/
A good article for companies like adMarketplace.com that have been working solely off the Google/Yahoo network for years.
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