Getting you to pay attention
p2pnet news view | Advertising:- To you, the Net is a way to talk to other people anywhere, any time, disseminate data and information, force the Powers that Used to Be to do stuff in your best interests, not theirs, showcase your art and music and generally short-circuit corporate efforts to keep you at mushroom level.
But to online companies (naming no names 
) which purport to exist to serve you, the Net is there for one purpose only: to scam you into viewing advertisements promoting corporate crap you don’t want and don’t need.
The trouble (for them) is, the dumbed-down consumer of yesterday is the savvy customer of today who knows what s/he wants and is quite capable of deciding what to buy or what not to buy without any help from the advertising slicksters.
And this in turn means the latter are having to find even more devious ways to get you to even look at their snake oil, let alone buy it.
‘… unscrupulous advertisers and their agencies’
Advertisers and the people working for them have all kinds of glib buzz phrases such as ‘behavioral marketing’ and ‘re-targetting’ to try to make it look like what they’re doing is OK and above board.
“Behavioral marketing has become a staple in today’s online media plans, with spending estimated to reach $1.2 billion this year, up 30 percent from 2005 and exceeding the 24.7 percent growth rate of overall online advertising (eMarketer),” says iMedia Connection, going on, “behaviorally targeted advertising is expected to comprise nearly 21 percent of all online media purchases in 2006 — more than double that in 2005. As marketers embrace the concept, they are beginning to explore creative strategies within the behavioral marketing discipline.”
And, “One approach that is winning a lot of fans is retargeting,” says the story.
“Online publishers have accused unscrupulous advertisers and their agencies of stealing their audiences by using a new form of audience targeting technology,” says Australian IT, quoting an investigation by The Australian which has, “revealed the growing use of ‘retargeting’ technology which enables advertisers to slash their internet advertising costs by tagging visitors to premium websites”.
It says this involves, “advertisers serving ads embedded with cookies to a premium website”. The cookie, “tags visitors to the website and that data is retained”.
The advertiser or agency, “then moves its campaign to cheaper websites but the cookie ensures the advertiser matches its ads to the original audience” and, “One media agency said an advertiser could pay $50 to reach 1000 visitors on a premium website but might only pay $2 for the same audience using this technology.”
‘Anonymously observing consumers’ behaviors’
“Retargeting works by anonymously observing consumers’ behaviors while they are visiting your website,” says iMedia.
“Targeted messages are delivered to those consumers after they leave — based on whether or not they completed a desired action. While behavioral marketing in general uses online actions to identify, reach and convert good prospects, retargeting focuses on consumers who have actually been to your site.”
“Anonymously observing consumers’ behaviors”of course translates into spying on you, “desired action” means somehow getting you to do something they want you to do, or going somewhere they want you to go, whether you want to or not, and “convert good prospects” means turning you into their sucker as opposed to someone else’s.
According to Eric Beecher, publisher of Crikey.com.au, “and a shareholder in online business publisher Business Spectator, a site whose high-income audience is one of many at risk of being tagged without the publisher’s knowledge,” says The Australian.
Other sites at risk are, “classified sites, niche players such as CNET and the IT sections of major publishers, whose readers are very valuable to advertisers,” this is the story, continuing »»»
At PHD Australia, digital director Jonathan Axworthy said his agency had used the technology for its client Air New Zealand. It ran a campaign on News Digital Media, tagged the audience, and then retargeted them at a lower cost on Ninemsn’s Hotmail site.
“(We said) let’s cookie people who visit that section and when we see them across the web we served them a Business Premier (business class) ad rather than just a normal Air New Zealand ad,” Mr Axworthy said.
“It’s fantastic,” he said. “It reduces wastage.”
But, “Most publishers, “said they were looking at ways to stop the practice,” the story states, quoting
‘ … you’ll need to be persistent’
News Digital Media commercial director Ed Smith as saying he was investigating the trend (NDM is owned by News Limited, publisher of The Australian). “It’s new and it’s weird and no one really has thought about it yet,” he said. “It’s not illegal. It’s possibly immoral.”
Weird it may be. But is it new? The iMedia story ran in 2006 and concludes retargeting is, “ideally executed across a network that has the size and diversity of websites to reach your consumer virtually anywhere,” adding:
“The broader the reach, the faster you’ll hit your target again — especially critical if your product or service has a short window of opportunity. That being said, even on the largest networks, you’ll need to be persistent to ensure your message finds its way back to your target consumer.
“In the universe of behavioral marketing strategies, retargeting is a great way to cost efficiently capitalize on each and every site visitor. Your search marketing, banner ads and offline efforts will do some of the work, while retargeting will finish the job — converting browsers into buyers, buyers into repeat buyers and repeat buyers into life-long, loyal customers.”
And it’s all to get you to pay attention.
iMedia Connection – Retargeting Saves Money, May 3, 2006
Australian IT - Admen ’steal’ internet viewers, December 15, 2008
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December 16th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Had a particularly nasty bit of advertising pop up recently, that automatically redirected the user to a whole web site. Honestly, as soon as adblock comes out for Chrome, I’m getting it.
…I also wouldn’t be surprised if sooner or later someone decides that the bullshit the advertising companies pull has gone too har.
December 17th, 2008 at 8:50 am
thanx for posting this Jon,
This is why you NEVER turn on cookies unless the site specifically requires it for login or necessary specific task. Take back your browsing!
There are some pretty good Ad blockers out there, try using them. It takes up to a month of telling the suckers to block ads but in the end you will be free of 95% of ads.
Since the web is a news outlet here is a gem i found on truthdig:
“It used to be that news was spread by word of mouth, then came travelers and some trade who spread the news. Afterwards town criers took over control of official news while the everyone else still used word of mouth as any real news.
Print was only used for official business since only the rich could afford it. When this gap between rich and poor was breached it added advertising as means to fund it. In so doing later newspapers created their own problem.
Now that we have the Internet anyone can post news as it happens to the dismay of officials and anyone else. News print will suffer and continue to suffer due to many reasons:
not reporting truth,
reporting only partial truth,
not reporting what should be reported,
hiding the truth,
bias reporting due to corporate or other interests,
refusing to take into account comments by highly intelligent and average humans alike,
and the list goes on and on.
Therefore newspapers have created their own slow death or they better learn how to report news as it is and full background to each. Keep in mind disclosure and full disclosure is key. Without it newsprint will go the way of the Dodo bird.
Society is changing to full facts about anything and everything and any secrets will be disseminated whether some who think they have power like it or not.
As any part of human history states, adapt or die. “