What I Do, Not What I Say

This year’s buzz at the National Advertising convention is about “behavioral targeting”, which means paying more attention to what consumers do and less attention to what they say. The buzz is mostly about tracking what people do online - but can also be combined with consumer patterns offline. For example, Home Depot uses its stores as a virtual lab to better understand its customers.

One theory is that what people say and what they do can diverge - and so as behavioral targeting becomes more prominent, traditional research like polling and focus groups stop being a single driver for marketers. Instead understanding public support becomes more complex by tracking both what actions people take as well as what opinions they express. For example, opinion polls may indicate the country is divided on hot button issues like abortion and birth control, but online traffic patterns reveal that the demand for reproductive health information continues to rise and may therefore be a more true indictor of the nations attitudes on these issues. Professional pollsters have always known that getting unbiased opinion from consumers is tough, but with online tracking its now possible to peek into the public’s thought process by carefully tracking what choices they make when surfing the web or engaging a web site.

Big corporations are investing big dollars in online advertising. For example, Microsoft just spent $6 billion on aQuantive, which is a major worldwide online advertising firm. But behavioral advertising can also work for small advertisers, because it allows for micro targeting of particular audiences.

The recent annual gathering of the National Association of Advertisers kept a major spotlight on behavorial targeting, so advocacy groups can expect to hear their consultants pitch this strategy. There are huge success stories attached to this strategy-but as with any approach it needs to be analyzed with caution. Some consumer advocates worry about privacy issue. And it is only advertising, not a guarantee. For example, Snapple was among the first major voices to promote the “behavioral targeting” strategy when it published a landmark study on the tactic a few years ago. Snapple reported amazing results from its behavioral targeting campaign during a product launch for a diet drink called “Snapple A Day”, but some prominent media critics dismissed the companies health claims, and many consumers stuck to old favorites like Slim Fast.

In December I’ll be presenting at the “Future of Brand Strategy” conference in Miami, where marketing executives from corporations such as Subway, Motorola, and Telemundo will be discussing their strategies to boost company image. No doubt we’ll be discussing the integration of “behavioral targeting” at that forum, I’ll report back.