targeting - Internet Marketing News and Blogs

In an online retail market expected to double in size to £78 billion by 2010* the potential rewards for e-commerce businesses are huge. Equally, so is the pressure to stay ahead of their competition. 

The desire for online businesses to become bigger and better inevitably affects their approach to redesign. There’s a huge temptation to introduce the latest whiz bang functionality and super cool design which will appeal to a whole new generation of customers.

Professor David Crystal is a linguistics expert and has developed 'semantic ad targeting' technology that he claims can be used to more accurately place ads in the correct context.

Professor Crystal recently sold his company Crystal Semantics to online ad network ad pepper media, which has used the technology to launch its iSense targeting system.

We talked to Prof. Crystal and ad pepper's board director Sacha Carton about the technology...

Is it enough to have just one killer creative execution, or are numerous variations required to achieve maximum performance?

With overall click-through-rates falling, advertisers are increasingly looking for ways to optimise online campaigns to improve results.

Email is still one of the most effective marketing channels for a small business today – it is cheaper, more measurable and can be targeted more effectively than traditional direct mail.

More than half of the respondents to our 2007 Industry Census that tracked their ROI, said that income from email marketing was three times or more than the amount spent , while almost a third said it was five times or more.

It occurred to me recently that we do not give spammers (and in their turn ISPs) enough credit for helping to make email a long-term, credible media.

How so?

Online marketers have long been focused on acquisition and traffic metrics. The key to staying ahead lies in the deployment of more sophisticated tools and techniques to boost income from landed traffic.

Are broad demographics really relevant in the online world? Is customer behaviour far more insightful to delivering your marketing message?

Behavioural information allows you to develop a toolbox of techniques to improve the relevance of your online marketing, delivering for one client a 600% uplift.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has apologised to members over “mistakes” made when implementing its targeted ad platform on an opt-out basis.

The Beacon system was moved to an opt-in footing last week after causing much ire among privacy campaigners, and users have now been offered a tool to turn it off permanently.

Providing web shoppers with bad quality recommendations could be worse than offering no recommendations at all, according to a new survey.

Conducted by online research provider MarketTools, the study claims four in ten shoppers are less willing to return to sites that suggest non-personalised products or items they already own.