Approaches that depend on demographic data alone face a tough fight to retain relevance in a programmatic and micro-targeted world, writes Nano Interactive’s Carl White
Demographic targeting is alive and well according to UKOM’s Ian Dowds in a recent article for Mediatel. But, while I agree with him that advertisers have become a little too fond of “the death of…” proclamations, when it comes to the demise of demographics, those predictions are borne out by reality.
The reason for this comes down to a trend that’s been present in our sector since the early days of digital advertising – the unstoppable drive towards personalisation.
Demographic targeting is really an echo from our offline days when we had no choice but to lump people together into categories and hope that we hit the target. We’ve since discovered that consumers come in all different shapes, sizes, preferences, likes and backgrounds. No two people are the same – even if, on paper, they do fit neatly into the same age demographic.
Yes, demographic data today is a whole lot more sophisticated than it used to be, but why bother with even the most finely segmented demographic when you can serve one-to-one ads in real-time based on an individual’s interests, and all completely anonymously? Because, and I’m not exaggerating here, that’s exactly what marketers can now do.
State your intent
Ian Dowds is right to be sceptical towards programmatic advertising – cookie targeting has never been as effective as was promised and made our industry potentially vulnerable to fraud. However, programmatic represents an approach that will outgrow and transcend even the cookie. Programmatic advocates look for ways to automate and scale media trading safely and the emerging category of intent based targeting offers an intriguing and progressive approach that can thrive even in the cookie free world.
However, programmatic represents an approach that will outgrow and transcend even the cookie. Programmatic advocates look for ways to automate and scale media trading safely and the emerging category of intent based targeting offers an intriguing and progressive approach that can thrive even in the cookie free world. [advert position=”left”]
If you’re not familiar with it, intent marketing involves identifying and acting on actual signals of interest in a product or service, as opposed to pinpointing audiences based purely on retrospective profile or demographic data. It’s nothing new, of course; marketers have been using intent targeting for many years. The difference now is artificial intelligence and machine learning have taken it to a whole new level, particularly in the field of search-based analysis.
Through AI techniques, we’re now able to create detailed maps of a user’s search activity to better predict their interests and deliver them targeted brand messages in relevant environments. It’s an approach which, frankly, leaves demographic data in the shade.
What a consumer wants, a consumer gets
No matter how finely tuned your marketing segment is, there’s likely always going to be someone on the receiving end who isn’t right for the message. Because of ad blockers, consumers don’t have to just passively accept this. They can vote with their feet and block all ads entirely, undermining the sustainability of online media.
Alongside ad blockers, consumers also have the Coalition for Better Ads, which is essentially giving them a voice within our industry to demand a better user experience. Their calls will only get louder and marketers cannot afford to let any consumer slip through the net. That’s why, going forward, demographic targeting will increasingly struggle to meet our needs.
With intent marketing, however, you’re not serving ads to segmented groups of consumers, you’re serving them to individuals who have given a genuine signal of interest in your product or service. As the need for precision and relevance increases, intent marketing is becoming a no brainer.
The other thing to remember is that demographic targeting is becoming an increasingly risky option in the current regulatory climate. GDPR has made it much harder to store cookie and demographic-based data without infringing on the privacy rights of the consumer. The fines for doing this can be astronomical.
To avoid these risks, digital marketers will increasingly need to evolve away from retrospective analysis and pivot towards real-time, ‘in the moment’ targeting of consumer behaviour – exactly what intent-based strategies deliver.
The last rites for demographic data
OK, it hasn’t come to that just yet. The level of innovation we’re seeing in marketing tech could see demographics evolve into something far more sophisticated and consumer-centric – in which case, I’ll happily eat my own words.
But, as things currently stand, our continual drive towards personalisation and relevance in advertising will eventually leave broad demographic data far behind. Is demographic targeting going to deliver relevancy to every consumer you target? No. Is it going to sit well in our post-GDPR world? No, again.
So, why turn back the clock? Approaches that depend on demographic data alone face a tough fight to retain relevance in a programmatic and micro-targeted world where signals of user intent can deliver marketers relevance in real time.
Carl White is co-founder and group CEO of Nano Interactive
CORRECTION: This article was updated 26 September at 16:55. The original misquoted UKOM’s Ian Dowds in the first paragraph in ‘State your intent’ section. The new copy addresses this mistake.
