When I got into the business of digital marketing back in 2010, one of the Web’s promises to advertisers was that it could target messages to consumers in ways that television, radio, and print never could. So when you consider the Google Online Marketing Challenge – do it right!
I was never impressed with the way large advertisers used mass media to go after certain audience demographics without regard for context. The Web offered me a unique opportunity to show advertisers not only how to reach the right people, but how to reach them in the right place and at the right time.
A Mass Medium it Ain’t
Throughout my career as an online media planner, I’ve most admired the campaigns that have that magical combination of reaching the right people in the right place in the most appropriate manner. Yet as I surf the Web seventeen years after it has become a commercial medium, I find myself exposed to advertising messages that are irrelevant to my surfing habits and state of mind. This shows me that advertisers still don’t understand the Web’s unique targetability.
Why aren’t online advertisers taking advantage of the one-to-one marketing principles we’ve heard so much about over the past few years?