Marketers are increasingly using targeting to deliver digital ads that are more relevant and engaging for the viewer.
This is according to Marcus Stephens, GM for publishing at Kagiso Media, who adds that marketers in SA are starting to realise the power of targeted advertising. This allows them to win the viewer's attention through messaging that is relevant to the audience's needs and interests.
"To make this possible, there is a range of data we can collect about people using cookies. The data allows us, as publishers and marketers, to track a Web user's interests and behaviour," notes Stephens.
Tracking data involves building a profile of the user's needs that can be used to target advertising with more precision. "It's important to note that this data is not used to personally identify a user, but rather to segment him or her at a very granular level," he adds.
There are three forms of targeting that deliver value to the brands that use them: retargeting, behavioural targeting and psychographic targeting. The first involves serving ads to Web site visitors based on their previous interactions with the brand's online content.
Behavioural targeting utilises information about a user's Web-browsing behaviour - like pages visited or searches conducted - to select the best ads to display to that individual. Psychographic targeting is fairly new in SA, says Stephens. The concept sees marketers and advertisers pooling information such as demographics, personality traits, interests and beliefs to target adverts.
"With enough psychographic data, we can target ads in a very sophisticated way," he says, noting that while it is complex to deploy these strategies, they have the potential to improve return on investment by allowing a company to talk to the right people at the right time, while building a better relationship with the individual.
"This is terrific for marketers, provided they use the access to data to create a better, more meaningful and more relevant customer experience."
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