Adgitize to Provide Targeted Marketing
Posted by kexbrown on March 7, 2010
Many advertisers over the last year and a half have requested the ability to target their ads to specific markets within the Adgitize Ad Network. Target Marketing is the ability to show your ad only on specific publisher blogs that write for a specific subject or category.
Target Marketing to Subject Matter
We received the first request for targeted marketing back in December 2008. An advertiser requested to only show their ad on blogs with a subject matter of sports. Target marketing will allow our advertisers to specify a specific subject matter category like sports, computers, politics or music and video. Adgitize has created 32 specific subject matter categories within which our advertisers will be able to specifically target their ad.
Adgitize has also created regional or continent categories, so you will be able to target a specific area of the world. This new geographic categorization will enable advertisers to aim their ad to a particular audience.
This will help publishers within the Adgitize Ad Network as they will begin to see ads that relate more to their subject matter. If you are writing a sports blog then you will be more likely to see ads showing up on your blog related to sports.
How Will this Affect Publisher Blogs?
How will this all work within the Adgitize network? Other than seeing more targeted ads on their blog pages the publisher really won’t see much difference. The publisher will still see the same amount of income or more as we won’t be changing how earnings are calculated. If there aren’t targeted ads within a subject matter then we will still be showing “run of network” ads on your pages.
If you choose “run of network” ads then your ad will still be showing across the Adgitize Universe of blogs. The goal with this program is to allow advertisers to target their ads closer to their targeted market group.
This program will allow advertisers a better relationship with their targeted audience. These ads will cost more, $3 per month. They will produce less total impressions than a run of network ad. I would expect the click through rate to be better. The visitors to your blog should be more attuned to your subject matter and therefore more likely to comment and become a regular visitor.
My old Marketing book from my college days defines target market as, “a fairly homogeneous (similar) group of customers to whom a company wishes to appeal.” And they define Target Marketing as, “a marketing mix is tailored to fit some specific target customers.” That’s from Basic Marketing by McCarthy and Perreault.
Publishers Please Read!
We need our publishers to do some work. To make this new Adgitize Target Marketing work we need you to give us some information about your blogs. Please at your first opportunity go to Manage Blogs, and for each of your blogs choose Edit Blog Info. There you will be able to Edit the Categories that best describe Your Blog. These are Broad categories. Our publisher base isn’t large enough to choose In-line skating, but it is okay to choose Recreation and Sports.
We have been collecting this demographic and geographic information on our new blogs for the last two weeks. If you want more targeted ads to show on your blogs then now is the time to update your blog information so we can all serve our customers better.
Advertiser’s Portion to Follow This Week!
We will be completing the portion for the advertisers to begin to target their ads later this week. We will publish more information for advertisers when we deploy that code. This will help our community, both the publishers and advertisers, as we give more opportunity to advertisers to target their ads geographically and demographically.
Target Your Ads Geographically
Targeted marketing is the mainspring of advertising and we are excited at Adgitize to be offering this new service to our customers. Targeting your ads geographically to specific sections of the world will increase the chances for like minded customers to enter your blog. Demographic targeting your customers will offer the chance for greater click throughs to your blog pages with “sticky” customers. These are visitors that stick around and read more articles.
Please work with us as we roll out this new service to make it another Adgitize Winning opportunity for our advertisers and publishers. Thank you in advance for your cooperation with this new service.
sharkbytes said,
Nature/ Outdoors PLEASE? So few lists include this category, and there really are blogs and readers for this topic.
kexbrown said,
@Sharkbytes – Do you think that Nature / Outdoors falls under Recreation and Sports or Home and Garden?
Chinaren said,
Would it be possible to have an ALL option for geographic location? I think the current choice is rather restrictive.
Also, is the geographic location for the blogger or for the audience?
kexbrown said,
@Chinaren – The geographic location is per member and is where you personally are located. We understand that your blog is written for the entire world, but you personally are in one location.
So for geographic location you can only choose one location for your blogs.
Once we set up the advertiser’s portion you will be able to target all locations. But, there is no need to target all locations because our current run of network ads already target all locations.
kexbrown said,
I should mention that if you need to change your location you can go to the Profile section to make your change. There is a section on the Profile page titled “Change Member Location.”
sharkbytes said,
Nature/ Outdoors is neither Sports and Rec nor House & Garden. That’s the problem. It is enjoyment of plants and animals, geology, ecosystems, etc simply on their own merit. There might be hiking or a garden involved from time to time, but that is not the point.
See The Everyday Adventurer, and as you know, My Quality Day, Favorite Nature Blogs, and any of the members of that group.
kexbrown said,
@Sharkbytes – we have added Nature and Outdoors to the list. Thanks for the suggestion.
sharkbytes said,
O Ken!!!! I really thank you! I am so tired of not fitting into lists of categories and most places won’t ad it. I’ll spread the word that you have a place for us!!!
Martin@Cornyman's Money-Blog said,
I second Chinaren’s remark.
I think it would be better to focus on the locations of out visitors than on the location of the blog owner.
When i look in my statistics, not many members from Europe (or Germany) frequent my blog. Most of the visitors are from USA and from Asia.
If someone want to target the European area the ad would be shown on my blog but the results would be poor for the advertiser.
Would it be not better to check up to 3 of the 11 geographic location from where we get the most visitors to our blogs?
kexbrown said,
@Martin – You are correct. We are working on a better solution. It may be a couple of weeks before it is released. Ideally, when we are done with phase two, we will know your mix per blog and will be able to categorize based on that data.
It won’t be perfect as we will be utilizing ipAddress which is an imperfect tool.
Martin@Cornyman's Money-Blog said,
Yes, Ken, there won’t be any perfect systems as the targeting can be only done with data from the past.
But as we know the internet is a worldwide community, so it could happen that in the following week suddenly more visitors come from Europe than from the USA or Asia.
How often will the mix be updated?
kexbrown said,
@Martin – It definitely won’t be a perfect system. So, let’s say an advertiser targets Europe. On your blog Europe is the top location market from your visitors. So, of course we make sure this advertiser’s ads show on your blog.
Up to this point everything is cool and all parties are happy. But, let’s say that you have Southeast Asia as your secondary top visitor point. When those visitors from the Philippines click the ad from your blog and the advertiser evaluates their traffic numbers, will they be happy seeing that a lot of traffic is coming from the Philippines even though they were targeting European blogs?
It is a little different than direct mail advertising where you are delivering pieces of mail directly to your target audience.
The advertisers will have to understand that a blog’s traffic is dynamic and the best we can do is pinpoint to our best guesstimate and see what happens.
As a blogger, I can’t discriminate between visitors and not allow visitors from locations different than the market I want to target.
Anyway, I do see us accumulating data daily and probably updating your blog marketing mix no less than weekly. Maybe even daily. Once the software is written it shouldn’t matter the time frame we choose.