Missing the Target(ed)
This being Apple week, I will focus my themes on topics of interest that may or may not emerge as Apple gets ready to unveil its new crop of hardware and software offerings and updates.
One area of interest that has been surfacing, especially with the help of Howard Stern, is ad blocking.
Safari will receive an update in iOS 9 that will bring Content Blocking Safari Extensions to the iOS. Content Blocking gives developers extensions in an easy, fast and efficient way to block cookies, images, resources, pop-ups, and other content.
This could potentially be the first real death blow against the mindless banner ad. That high volume, low converting device we have been using since the birth of the Interwebs to advertise online.
In the beginning banner ads made sense (in theory) they were made for the desktop, annoying as they were, it was a standard unit in which web pages could all accommodate. But then came mobile…
Ah mobile, the great disrupter.
Mobile inverted the internet and made it about us, not about the browser or the website or even the content. Mobile allows us to consume ourselves and those around us. We share and get shared and the rest of the internet serves as the fodder for which we curate and consume.
We now have the internet exactly where we have always wanted it. Right in the palms of our hand. Which poses a greater challenge to content creators and marketers alike. How do we create content that people want to consume, knowing that they ultimately want to consume themselves?
Ive personally overseen the making of probably thousands of banners over the course of my career. They have kept the lights on and have broken many young designers into the business, and as a creative technologist and team leader I’ve tried to shine a positive light on the work by likening them to building a ship in a bottle.
Yes, a tiny ship in a bottle… The small space that provides enough restriction for creativity to be either really good or horribly annoying.
The internet has gotten smarter and more personalized. Retargeting is one of the ways we are able to try and deliver the content to people that has some kind of context to something they did at some point on their internet feeding frenzy.
Retargeting is a cookie-based technology that uses simple Javascript code to anonymously ‘follow’ audiences all over the web.
Retargeting can be effective because it focuses ad spending on people who are already familiar with a brand, product or service and have demonstrated some level of interest in it through their internet behavior.
However, the creativity and methods in which marketers employ retargeting efforts have been lackluster to say the least.
Someone looks at a pair of shoes, possibly because a friend sent them a link to ask if they liked the shoes, and then they are forever haunted by a banner ad for those shoes everywhere they go online. It can drive a person mad.
Especially when a Brah wants to impress his Bros while out having a Brewski showing off the most hilarious website he saw this week. And when that totally hilarious website comes up it is filled with banner ads featuring all the frilly products that the Brah’s girlfriend had Snapchatted to him for their upcoming summer trip… Brah is embarrassed and Bros never pass up an opportunity for a good scoff.
Not a very effective strategy.
However, of all the digital platforms I can think of right now the one that comes to mind as having the most potential for creativity is retargeting.
Retargeting is actually a wonderful way to tell a story online. A more complete story and a contextual story. One that can truly express the value of a brand, product or service within the context of a consumer’s interests as they browse the interwebs.
Rather than haunting people with ads they don’t want to see why not create a series of ads that tell a more precise story within the context of someone’s life?
Make someone actually want to see another new version of the ad on the next place they go rather than loathe knowing that the same ad will be waiting for them at their next stop on the web.
People aren’t stupid.
Consumers are fully aware that they are being targeted. As a matter of fact there are now 198 million active Adblock users around the world. Ad blocking grew by 41% globally in the last 12 months.
These are big numbers and these numbers are a direct response to the fact that we as marketers are failing to use technology and creativity to create compelling short stories through the magic and personalization of retargeting.
Now that developers and the public have more control over ad blocking how will we as marketers respond in order to make people actually want to see our ads rather than put fourth the effort to block them?
How can we create beautifully crafted, personalized short stories that will sell products based on the context of targeted segments so that we may serve up the right “chapter” of an unfolding serial that is a well crafted retargeting campaign?
How can we use data and insights along with realtime programmatic ad serving as well as peppering in some programmatic creative to make our short stories more endearing?
How can we actually lead and encourage people to visit more destinations online because they will actually want to see what ads will show up and how that brand, product or service couples itself through that different prism of their lives?
I find this to be a fascinating and exciting opportunity we as marketers have ahead of us. Many will mail it in and keep doing what they are doing.
Some of us will extend the boundaries of creativity and technology to tell better stories. Leveraging the power of technology and creativity to make better, more compelling ads that wont get blocked.
What Apple is doing by enabling ad blocking is actually not restricting us as marketers, rather forcing us to become more creative with how we use the technology we have available to us.
To get us to create ad units that people want to see and not choose to block and perhaps finally elevate the craft of building a ship in a bottle.
