I recently read an article that spoke to the enormity of information being generated each day throughout the Internet. In addition to the thousands of articles being generated from traditional web powerhouses such as ESPN and the New York Times, the article insinuates that user generated content has pushed the information on the internet to new levels. In fact Google CEO Eric Schmidt is quoted as saying “Every two days, we create as much information as we did up to 2003.”
This statistic is certainly not hard to believe with all of the blog platforms, social streams, and video content uploaded every minute. It is also not surprising that many of the new apps we read about are geared towards organizing this information in order to keep the “signal-to-noise” ratio in balance for consumers (does it seem there is a new RSS reader or social portal app launched everyday?). And older technologies such as search engines are battling to keep up as is illustrated by Google integrating Twitter mentions into hot topic search results.
Like consumers, advertisers are facing a similar “signal-to-noise” problem. In other words, there are so many options and segments that advertisers have to be careful to recognize the noise – or at least prioritize it. For example, when a Facebook user declares in their profile that they like BMW, does this make them the right audience for a BMW (or Lexus) advertisement? Is that as powerful as a consumer who Googles “BMW for sale”? Today, it is not uncommon for a digital advertising campaign to include display, search, video, blogging, PR, mobile, email, and social components using numerous platforms. An obvious risk is spreading the budget too thin and not being effective on any channel. In turn, this is also one contributor to digital marketing being allocated a higher percentage of the overall budget.
There is hope for advertisers. Amidst all the clutter, new technologies are emerging and a fundamental shift is occurring. This technological shift could push advertising to the next level in terms of targeting. Consider that the line between the Internet and real life has diminished. A growing amount of collected data comes from real world actions such as social check-ins and purchases. Also consider that conversations that previously happened over closed channels like email are now happening over open platforms like Twitter and Facebook, where the information can be indexed and recorded by the platforms themselves. Therefore new options arise, such as Lexus marketing to people who have visited a BMW dealer recently or to people who have mentioned buying a BMW while conversing with their friends.
Will advertising based on real-world behavioral information (not to be confused with the internet term “behavioral advertising”) be more fruitful than advertising based on user-input data such as profiles and search phrases?
