The benefits of online behavioural advertising

Featuring the Guardian, AOL, the Post Ofice and Profero

Online Behavioural Advertising significantly benefits all those in the value chain, from publisher, to network, and the advertiser. This section provides guidance and case studies to help you better understand the real opportunities and benefits within OBA, drawing from the expertise of those immersed in the industry.

The agency’s perspective – how to plan your campaign to see the real benefits of online behavioural advertising - Ross Jenkins, head of profero performance

Marketers have long sought to understand consumer behaviour, taking meaning from their interests, needs and purchasing habits to segment consumers into distinct customer groups. And by doing this, they create more meaningful, targeted and efficient communications tailored to the groups they’ve identified.

What underpins this segmentation is data, whether obtained from focus groups, panels, surveys or observation. It allows us to identify the patterns in consumer behaviour that, with demographic overlay, become the basis for our segmentation. In the simplest terms, media planners then use this data to ‘map’ a selection of media onto those segments.

With the digitisation of media, and particularly the internet, marketers’ ability to target consumers according to their behaviour is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Data-driven behavioural marketing technologies can build precise, composite audience segments based on internet user behaviour, allowing advertising that is relevant and timely. And the technology, particularly from a cross-platform (TV, web, mobile) perspective, is really only in its infancy; a true understanding of its potential has not yet been realised.

How to plan behavioural media

There’s no single use or role for behavioural media; it can be used to build affinity and preference for brands, or it can be used as a driver of response. Most times it will be doing both, regardless of what you set out to do.

With this in mind, and given that the previous contributors have deftly defined the technology, in this section we’ll focus on some best practices that can be applied most of the time you are thinking about behavioural media.

Audience definition - Here, as with any form of media planning, you need to think about your most valuable audiences. Who do you want to target? Why do you want to target them? How do segments differ, and how might your strategy change segment to segment? Once you’ve done this, you can start to define the touchpoints where you can build those segments.

Segment creation

Imagine, for example, that you are selling offshore banking products to an audience of retired British expats. This is a fragmented and typically hard to reach audience at any significant scale. Furthermore, whilst many of these expats can be found in online communities & forums devoted to their needs, buying advertising space in these environments can be relatively expensive. However, by issuing cookies to user browsers from a single media buy placed in these spaces, the advertiser can build a composite segment of British expats to be re-targeted at a later date.

This is but one example of how behavioural segments can be created; other opportunities for segment creation may be via click throughs on your paid search ads, users interacting with query fields or search tools on your site, or reading content related to your product or service; the rest is down to your ability as a marketer to define relevant audience
touchpoints and cookie your audience within these spaces.

Recency

A key factor to consider is recency. For example, as a driver you are only really interested in car insurance for two or three days a year (i.e. when your policy is about to run out). Therefore, car insurance advertisers looking to compete in the all important research and consideration phase would look to up-weight their media targeting people during this crucial phase.

From a behavioural targeting perspective, recency can be controlled by setting a ‘cookie-window’ on segments to be re-targeted. Once this cookie window has expired the cookie (user) drops out of the targeting pool, thus focusing all advertising expenditure on the most relevant audiences and enhancing share of voice during key periods in the customer journey. Clearly, the recency factor will change from product to product – expat banking is relevant at several stages during the customer journey, whereas the need for car insurance is a more discreet requirement.

Messaging

A final factor to consider is messaging. Several technologies are emerging which allow the advertiser to personalise their message based on the user’s behaviour. For example, if you reviewed several types of jeans on a retailer’s site, that user can then be re-targeted with advertising showing similar or related products in combination with an offer or discount as an enticement to purchase. Another example could be to target someone with car rental advertising immediately after buying lights to particular destination. Clearly, when combined with recency factoring this becomes a powerful vehicle for customer acquisition and demand generation.

Whilst these four points are not exhaustive, and every client, audience & campaign presents different circumstances, hopefully they outline some of the key considerations for media planners and advertisers looking to engage in this space. In this economic climate, and with many advertisers shifting investment to direct response forms of media, behavioural targeting offers a powerful opportunity for competitive advantage and growth of market share.

5 top tips for successful online behavioural advertising - Rob Blake, head of agency sales, AOL Advertising

Behavioural advertising enables advertisers to reach valuable customers no matter where they are surfing on the web. By targeting consumers behaviourally, advertisers can engage people when they are most receptive to their message delivering these with frequency and at scale.

1. Benefit from this ‘Green’ advertising!

Behavioural advertising aims to deliver as many impressions as possible directly to your target audience thereby reducing campaign wastage. Targeting specific groups like ‘Auto Intenders’ can be expensive if you are buying against editorial adjacency. Behavioural targeting offers a highly cost effective and eficient way to engage in-market car buyers

2. Relevant messages delivered to ready-made audiences

True behavioural advertising is delivered based on real user interests. To do this, users are segmented into different interest groups based on anonymous information such as internet activity, Search or click data over a defined period of time (for example, the last 30 days). This qualification process ensures you are only targeting consumers who
are interested in your products and more likely to engage with your advertising.

3. Reach your target audience at scale

Behavioural advertising allows you to buy “people not pages”. This is not a contextual buy and not restricted by availability of specific and often crowded and high demand placements. Ads might not always be shown in directly relevant environments, however ads are shown to users based on their interest in environments they are choosing to visit and therefore they are more likely to respond to your ad.

4. Powerful insights into your target audience to help boost future performance

Always ensure you ask for a post campaign report. Behaviourally targeted campaigns provide insight into which of your segments have performed and maybe able to reveal additional segments of consumers who have engaged with your campaign. This insight is valuable for refining future online activity as well as supporting off-line campaigns and opportunities.

5. Build a brand with behavioural targeting

Getting the right message to the right people is the panacea for any marketer. Behavioural advertising is a powerful way to raise brand awareness, especially relevant for new brands coming online but essential for anyone looking for a one to one conversation with their customers.

The brand’s perspective – Post Office case study - Alex Tait, digital sales and marketing manager, Post Office

The Post Office® has the UK’s largest retail network with branches across the UK. The Post Office® offer more than 170 different products and services, with over 20 million people visiting postofice.co.uk and approximately 93% of the UK adult population visiting a Post Ofice® branch every year.

We use behavioural targeting within our display campaigns to improve buying eficiencies and to maximise our conversion rates, ensuring relevant messaging and creative are served to the right proile of prospects and customers at the right time.

We currently use two forms of behavioural advertising. Audience Profiling targets our ads based on the typical behavioural proile of a prospect or customer using publisher or broker data. This method maximises coverage.

Third Party Re-targeting looks at how a user has interacted with postofice.co.uk or an ad. Re-messaging converts warm leads and cross-sells across our product portfolio to existing customers. For example, if a user has clicked on one of our ads or started a product journey on our website we may re-target them with our advertising, using bespoke creative to move the prospect through the path to purchase and to increase click through rate.

Behavioural targeting differs to other advertising we use as the focus shifts from “classical” planning variables (where the publisher classifies the audience based on research) to planning based on actual consumer interest and behaviour.

Re-messaging and re-targeting ads to consumers that have visited our site or clicked on our ads is also quite different from traditional media buys. It works for advertisers as their campaigns reach a more relevant audience and for media owners because inventory efficiencies are maximised ensuring higher campaign ROI.

The benefits of behavioural targeting for the Post Ofice® are that we gain access to a relevant audience without paying premium rates for a demographic or psychographic profile. We also achieve higher conversion from traffic due to the increased relevance of the ads.

The consumer benefits too because the advertising is more relevant to their interests and needs. To allay privacy concerns it is also worth noting that by using behavioural advertising in the way described here the advertiser can’t identify the consumer as an individual. The advertising is purely served via anonymous cookie-based, rather than personal, data.

As a case study example, over the summer period we re-message travel insurance and foreign currency ads to users that have clicked through from them but not gone on to purchase the product. This ensures that the display we are serving is as efficient as possible. We also serve other products to the consumer that we think they may be interested in. For instance, we serve foreign currency ads to customers that have bought
travel insurance.

The results are impressive and complement our overall media strategy for the product. Through continual optimisation of the campaign to a deliver maximum ROI we can run the activity all year round.

In the future our aim is to increase the sophistication of the programme to use bespoke creative per response scenario per product across more of the Post Ofice® portfolio. We are also looking to align the activity as much as possible with our other online and eCRM activity.

The publisher’s perspective: Guardian

For the publisher, online behavioural advertising allows an enhanced
offering that can provide advertisers with far greater return on investment,
making the most of the diverse interests and behaviours of their online
audience with more targeted ads.

Inventory extension

Even with an exceptional size of audience and volume of page impressions generated, there will still be inventory pressure on premium sites. Behavioural advertising enables the publisher to extend the volume of inventory available by targeting users of a particular section elsewhere on the site. This means you can extend any contextual buys and take more advertising budget from your advertisers.

Increased campaign success

Behavioural advertising means there are no wasted ad impressions. The right people are seeing the right adverts at the right time.

Increase advertising yields

Behavioural advertising helps enhance the value of site inventory. Because users see behavioural advertising wherever they are on the site, non-premium inventory is monetised at a higher rate. The more targeted the segment the higher the rate the publisher can command.

Find the right audience

Scale of audience means the number of segments you can create is virtually unlimited. Behavioural advertising allows you to find new audiences that advertisers are interested in.

In-market buyers

Understanding product buying cycles enables the publisher to create segments of ‘in-market’ buyers, targeting users when they’re in the right frame of mind before making a purchase.

Re-targeting

You can re-target users with relevant advertising across the site.

Better user experience

Behavioural advertising also means our users see more relevant adverts, giving them a better experience on our site.

Better relationships

Behavioural advertising offers agencies and clients the chance to get more involved with the irst party site and its audience. By involving them in the creation of segments you can help them develop their understanding and trust in behavioural advertising.

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