Marketing in a Digital World 2005 Tour: Boston
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Written by John Bohan, President of i20Events - Part 2 of 2
Featuring:
Rob Cosinuke, President of Digitas Boston
Ken Kimmel, President of Baskin-Robbins Concepts
Josh McCall, CEO of Jack Morton Worldwide
Greg Johnson, SVP, Director, Arnold One
Greg Smith, EVP of Insight & Planning, Carat Interactive
Micah Donahue, SVP/Group Marketing Director, Mullen
Micah Donahue (Mullen) & Greg Johnson (Arnold One)
Greg Smith (Carat) & John Bohan (i20Events)
The Behavioral Marketing Panel
Hugh McGoran of Real Cities asking a question
The Claria Executives
Greg Stevens (Claria) drawing the Sweepstakes Winners
David Schwartz (Claria) & Analesa Chen (Media Contacts)
"After our coffee break, Greg Johnson (Arnold), Greg Smith (Carat) and Micah Donahue (Mullen) took the stage to discuss the hottest topic of 2005, “Behavioral Marketing.”
Greg Smith opened the dialogue by defining behavioral marketing with four definitions:
- Contextual—Placing ad messages by search term or in relevant content
- Recency—Serving ads based on site or session behavior
- People—Targeting IP addresses (representing users) based on their recent online activity
- Probability—Using a core of cookie data in building more complex mathematical models to create “non-intuitive” profiles and using broad-based networks to target impressions that have a high probability of matching this profile.
Greg Smith indicated, “Most everything that we do on the web can be behavioral because in most cases we are targeting behavior not people.” He was particularly excited about the opportunity inherent within the fourth definition as it allows us to make something out of nothing, i.e. turn a meaningless impression into a highly targeted one.
Greg Johnson thought these definitions were dead on and went on to talk about the strength of behavioral marketing in opening up more options to target consumers as they begin to move down the purchase funnel. Search is important but it is only one element and at this point it only provides a brand marketer with 80 characters which is difficult to communicate an emotive message.
Micah added, “With behavioral marketing and other intelligent tools, campaigns are becoming more sophisticated as clients and agencies are beginning to apply the discipline of brand planning, research and customer understanding that has built their marketing plans. Now, we are looking at a more comprehensive set of metrics to leverage insight in building a better campaign.”
Greg Johnson provided a brief case study of Arnold’s work with Vonage as an example of how agencies and advertisers are beginning to leverage behavioral analysis over time to cater to a customer’s interest and increase conversations. Based upon traffic patterns, Arnold has developed about 15 different groups of people that they speak to differently. For example, the person moving houses will receive a different message and website experience than the technology enthusiast, the student, the recent college graduate, etc. Over time the data that Arnold is collecting anonymously on consumers helps them to target creative units much more effectively across the web with their 3 Billion ad impression per week.
With so much intelligence on consumer behavioral patterns, the natural question is: Are we going to completely move away from demographic targeting?
According to Greg Johnson, “Behavioral and demographics are definitely converging. Nothing goes away completely. They all have a role.”
It’s only logical that this convergence of demographic and behavioral targeting will also occur in television and other technologies. According to Greg Smith, “In 2010, 80% of all media will be digital.”
Greg Johnson added, “TV is getting a lot smarter. It will start to feel much more like the web as we start to know a lot more about characteristics of people.”
In conclusion, the three panelists gave their 30 second view of the ad marketplace in 5 years.
Micah said, “75% of the market is about results based targeting. With all the options available, the advertiser is going to pay for what’s working. 75% of media is also going to be tracked, modeled and predicted.”
Greg Johnson added, “Five years is not a very long period of time and the largest group of people with the most money won’t fundamentally change how they are. As for the percentage that goes to the Internet, if we’re at 5% today, I could easily see us a 20% in 5 years.”
Greg Smith concluded, “I think in 5 years we will be more the mainstream agency; traditional agencies will have morphed and the definition of media and cross generational media will have changed. More TV will be delivered on demand and TV will still be the dominant medium. How it’s bought will change though. I also think that what we have all been struggling with for the last 9 to 10 years will be the (media) models used.”
i20Events has been covering behavioral marketing in our conferences and road shows for about 2 years and the most amazing thing, for me, is the pure swiftness in which behavioral marketing is progressing as well as the manner in which ad agencies are beginning to embrace it to drive their clients’ businesses. Those that seem to embrace it now, are gaining valuable knowledge on the most critical element that will change the face of marketing.
Read Part I of i20Events' Marketing in Digital World Dinner Party in Boston
