The New York Times today has an article about real-time bidding for advertising. The idea is that once people make purchases, their behavior is tracked and auctions start going off to be able to advertise to that user. Real-time bidding has been going on for quite some time, but profiled in the article is a new company, AppNexus which helps advertisers automate the process of analysis and bidding.
This whole discussion got me thinking about the role of advertising as marketing, as content, as helpful, and as a nuisance. The latter is not something anyone strives for, but it’s the way so many people describe advertising.
Why do they do that? Are they just being pests? Do they just like to complain?
Yes, that all may be true, but I think the truth of the matter is that advertising becomes annoying when it’s unwanted. And since it’s so difficult to effectively target advertising on a one-to-one basis, so much of it becomes “annoying.” Yet no one realizes when an ad is targeted well. No one announces, “Wow, that ad was targeted so well to me, I’m so glad they sent it to me at just this time.” Instead, they might say, “Oh, that’s just what I want” and completely not be aware of the wizard behind the curtain moving all the levers to deliver an ad to you at just the opportune moment.
So when advertising comes in at an inopportune moment, which is most of the time, how can we make it more useful? Many advertisers realize this and that’s why we see so many ads that appeal outside of their core audience. A purely entertaining ad, even if it’s not targeted to me, is no longer annoying.
But if we get to the point that we can hyper target every single ad right down to the individual, and perfectly time it, will there be anymore need for creativity? If I know at exactly this moment that you want to get a coffee, I don’t need to be creative, I can just tell you that Starbucks is selling coffee right now. Come on in. I don’t have to do anything else. Maybe I have to give you an incentive like a coupon. But really, what more do I need to do?
Could efficient targeted advertising be the end of creative advertising?
Creative Commons photo attribution to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/autohistorian/ / CC BY-NC 2.0
David,
Great article and really thought-provoking. My experience is actually the opposite – if we give marketers the ability to tell a story (ie, control cadence and placement), it opens the door for engagement that we haven’t been able to do online except in tightly controlled environment (like a sponsorship with a specific publisher). To your example about Starbucks… is there anybody out there who doesn’t know about Starbucks yet? It’s going to take a really creative ad to get response and increase the brand impact. Why aren’t they running funny ads to people surfing from inside the store saying Hey! Go get a refill! and then when you get home it flips and says… mmmm Starbucks brewed at home. (Obviously I’m a tech guy not a creative guy, but you get the idea).
Brian