One huge targeting mistake and how to avoid it: Understand the context beyond few keywords

Contextual advertising is not new, when I first started writing about targeting advertising the technology was new, the concept was new and few bold marketers were trying and learning from their mistake while helping others teach on how not to make this mistakes.

A post by Kevin Hillstrom, Highly Targeted Digital Ads That, Well, Just Read The Article., tells me that we have yet to learn from the mistakes that have been made since the early years of online ad targeting.

I remember when we are first dabbling withdisplay ad targeting and retargeting back in early 2000s, one of the things we were trying to solve for is to understand the full context of the content you were reading.  We saw many marketers making the mistake of not understanding the negative context of the content and wasting their ad dollars on wrong content. For example we saw an ad targeted (I believe it was served by Google) on a page talking about plane crash that showed an ad for carry-on luggage. When you are reading such a tragedy, last thing you want to see is an ad about plane travel. Technology and best practices have come a long way since then but the same mistakes keep happening.

Here are two things you can today to make sure you do not make the same mistake as VW dealer (or their agency) made:

1. Filter ad placement on negative context: If you are going to show an ad about your brand then understand the whole context and then filter out any content that has negative context related your brand. For example the whole context of that video was about negative to VW because of recent emission scandal. You as a marketer need to know that a lot of recent content (video, articles, blog post etc.) are going to be about this scandal, so keeping this context in mind, create a list of negative keyword list e.g. emission, scandal, problem etc. Now filter out the ad targeting on the content which contain “Volkswagen” and these negative keywords because if you place your ads on such content it is likely not going be very effective. Stop wasting your dollars by targeting the wrong context.
2. Show Ad to counter the negativity around your brand – If there is a message that you have in response to the negative press then use this opportunity to put your message in front of the customer and prospects.

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Digital Marketing and Analytics Jobs

Take This Test To See If You Are Delusional

As a world famous writer once said, marketers are from Mars.

But today we are not talking about marketing nutjobs in general, today we're talking about you.

The question today is a personal one: How far have you deviated from reality?

Take this test to find out.

First, I want you to think about your refrigerator.

Think about all the stuff that's in there: The cheese, the eggs, the juice, the jelly, the butter, the beer, the mayonnaise, the bacon, the mustard, the frozen chicken strips...

Now think about your pantry. The cereals, the beans, the napkins, the flour, the detergent, the sugar, the rice, the bleach...

Next your medicine cabinet. The toothpaste, the pain relievers, the shampoo, the tweezers, the soap, the band-aids, the deodorant...

Now your dresser. Your socks, your underwear, your shirts, your pajamas, your swim suit, your t-shirts, your sweaters...

Now your car. The battery, the tires, the wiper blades, motor oil, gasoline, the air filter, the muffler...

Now answer these questions:

• Do you "share branded content" about any of this stuff? 
• Do you feel "personally engaged" with these brands? 
• Do you "join conversations" on line about this crap? 
• Do you ever "co-create" with any of these brands? 
• Do you feel like you are part of these brands' "communities?"

Now answer me this: If you don't, why in the fucking world do you believe anyone else does?

Okay, you may now return to your regularly scheduled delusions.

Think It's Easy Writing Nasty Things About Online Advertising Every Day?

Okay, maybe it is.

But just to keep things almost fresh, today I am not writing nasty things. I'm speaking them.

Today we have an audio post.

Last week I recorded an interview with Spark, a program that airs on the CBC (Canada's public radio.)

The interview is about online advertising, ad blocking, and gravitational wave inconsistencies in binary black hole systems.

Okay, not really that black hole stuff.

But it's almost interesting anyway. You can listen to it here.

Digital Hypocrites Getting What They Deserve

"Information wants to be free."

That was the moronic mantra of the digerati and the digital publishing industry.

When they were stealing content from newspapers and magazines and republishing it...

"Information wants to be free."

When they were hijacking intellectual property from artists and writers...

"Information wants to be free."

When they were aggregating other peoples' work and monetizing it...

"Information wants to be free."

As long as they could make some money from it, information wanted to be free.

Now that the greed, sleaze and stupidity of the online ad industry are driving people to ad blockers, information don't wanna be so free no more. Now "free" is "robbery"

Now they're telling us that there's a price. Now they're saying that in order to get all this "free" information we are not allowed to ignore the advertising. Yeah, suddenly there's a cost factor.

When they could make some money from it, information wanted to be free.

Now that their revenue stream is threatened, information wants to have a price tag.

Volkswagen Will Be Saved By Its Advertising

There is an article in Adweek this week entitled, "How Volkswagen Just Squandered 55 Years of Great Advertising."

The truth is exactly the opposite.

If VW is to extricate itself from the mess it has gotten into, perhaps the biggest asset it has is its tradition of superior advertising.

If this disgraceful atrocity had been perpetrated by Mazda or Fiat or Buick they'd be toast.

But it's different with Volkswagen. We like Volkswagen. We like it because, over time, their advertising has made us like it.

Now let's be a little careful here. They have not had 55 years of great advertising. Nobody does great advertising for 55 years. They've had their share of dogs (anyone remember Fahrvergnugen?) But they've had a lot more great advertising than the other car makers.

If they recover (and they will) the essential element to their recovery will be the reservoir of positive sentiment their advertising has created among consumers.

As I have said before in this space,

"Advertising serves two functions. The first function is the one that every marketer focuses on -- sales. But the second one is at least as important. Advertising is business insurance." 

One of the great blind spots that hardline advocates of online advertising (particularly display and search) have is their shallow belief in advertising as simply a sales or transactional undertaking.

In fact, the insurance value that excellent advertising builds over time is every bit as important.

Over the next 18 months, Volkswagen is about to learn that the billions of dollars they paid for business insurance over the past half century was worth every cent.

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Not Really A Blog Post

So I'm traveling and speaking for the next few days and I won't be posting until next week some time.

Today I'm in Winnipeg, Canada speaking to the Broadcasters Association of Manitoba and doing a interview with the CBC.

Tomorrow I'll be meeting with a group of Canadian advertising and marketing students. Poor bastards.

Then it's on to NYC for Advertising Week XII. You can tell it's a festival of bullshit by the Roman numerals. I'm speaking on Monday at 10:30 am at the AOL Stage, 11 Times Square. The title of the talk will be "Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey." I'm gonna need some muscle to protect me from deranged digital maniacs so get your ass over there.

And as long as I'm pimping, it wouldn't kill you to buy my book either.

Who's Going To Be Our Edward Snowden?

Somewhere this morning, working in advertising technology, there is someone who knows a lot about the real-world shenanigans that are going on in ad tech-land.

S/He can explain to us in simple terms the many ways advertisers are getting screwed, publishers are turning a blind eye to fraudulent traffic and click numbers, and consumers are being followed, tracked and cheated.

We need someone who understands the arcane technology and practicses of ad tech and can write this story in a way that will wake up the advertising and marketing industries to the corruption and fraud they've been subject to.

No one has yet to do it in a way that clearly, unambiguously and dramatically lays it all out.

Regardless of what you think of him, our industry needs an Edward Snowden.