A Tactical Retargeting Field Guide For Really Smart Marketers

9: “Similars” & Third Party Big Data
There are a number of emergent big data sets, both demographic and psychographic. They also surround occupation, workplace, skills, product affinity, education, and others. This includes first and third party data. Names you’ve heard of include DataLogix, BlueKai, Clearspring, Lotame, and niche data sellers like Forbes, MasterCard and Expedia. Any first party retargeting cookie you set (from your site visitors) can be further filtered by these third party big data services.  You can even target users by category, across multiple data services and serve them ads… even if those targeted have never been to your site.

Some DSPs, like Quantcast, have the ability to analyze users who visit your website.  They place code on your site and map visitors to other places the visitors have been. Some services track variables of visitors behavior on your site. Others mashup first party, analytics, and layers of third party data.

Ask potential partners how they use first and third party data. First party data means the users were on your site. Third party data means they were on somebody else’s site.  It may be hard to get to the bottom of some retargeting companies doublespeak. In future blog posts, we’ll be going deep into the interrelationships defining the big data industry as pertains to publishers and marketers.

Little Changed About Marketing, Retargeting = Amplification Of What Works
In the end, all of timeless marketing values rule. What are we telling which customers where in the process? How does the creative drive users towards conversion, appropriate for each time we touch the customer with targeting and retargeting? These are the same questions we’ve always asked.

Respect Your Audience: Don’t Be A Remarketing Creep!
Don’t be gross by assaulting your audience with never-ending ads. Limit daily frequency caps and pay attention to when ads start, end, how long they run, and how often they repeat. Retarget to serve your customers greater good. Be a good marketing witch 🙂 .

The upheaval we’re experiencing as an industry is not much different than GoTo.com’s first search PPC (1998), AdWords (2000), Universal SERPs, the onset of personalized SERPs, and social media. Now as always, strategic guile remains the essential element. Creativity, execution, and a keen understanding of products and customers are more important than ever.

Image Credits: Le penseur de Rodin: © patleem – Fotolia . com, Two girl Twins: © Andrey_Arkusha – Fotolia . com, Marketing and Strategy: terrymorris – istock .c om, Albert Einstein: arteyfotografia . com . ar, © Sergey Nivens – Fotolia . com

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