post Wednesday April 17, 2013
Effectively targeting an audience or group of individuals who represent a specific market is one of the biggest challenges to almost any company. This is a unique task that every company, from Mercedes-Benz to the local dry-cleaning company encounters in almost every aspect of their marketing activities. Companies that are able to efficiently reach the demographic that they desire without wasting advertising on groups of consumers who are outside of the target market is able to achieve greater returns on their marketing expenditures and efforts. As technology advances and there is a growing pool of data on consumers that can be integrated in real time, there are countless new tools for companies to utilize to achieve their goal of generating greater returns on advertising efforts. One of the leaders in the changes in advertising is British Sky Broadcasting Group (Sky).
Sky is integrating a new technology that will allow companies to specifically target audiences based on demographics, zip codes, viewing history and even down to specific houses. This new technology has the potential to help traditional TV regain some advertising momentum from the rapidly expanding digital and streaming internet services that have driven viewers away from standard televisions to their laptops and other products that allow for different ways to consume programming. Currently Sky’s AdSmart will have a limited launch later in 2013 and full rollout in 2014. AdSmart has the potential to allow advertisers the ability to target a high end product to wealthy viewers, or a enable a car company to produce a regular advertisement that transitions to a local car dealership for the last segment of the advertisement. One of the most compelling applications of AdSmart for companies is to focus advertisements based on household information and lifestyle. This could include new homeowner or families with a certain number of children. Other broadcast companies, such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable began working on a similar project, but only with limited integration to their broadcast capabilities.
An additional area of growth for AdSmart is utilizing the big data that is gathered on consumers’ web browsing history, recent web searches and even by partnering with credit agencies such as Experian in order to gather further information about the consumer. As there is a growing amount of data because of the high level of connectivity, this further paves the way for intelligent advertising that reaches more of the potential target markets. This product does have considerable questions and roadblocks ahead. There are always privacy concerns for consumers when large amounts of data are gathered from activities of the individual. Additionally, there is a great deal of cost associated with integrating this new technology and developing strategies that best utilize the growing capabilities. There are clear benefits for firms that could be realized by these advancements, but there are no guarantees of the long term success of technologies like AdSmart.
Source:Financial Times
Image Source: Free Digital Photos
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