FT Digital Media & Broadcasting Conference: Targeted advertising still in its infancy, according to Yahoo MD

Yahoo’s UK and Ireland MD, Mark Rabe, told delegates at the FT Digital Media & Broadcasting Conference today that we are only “in the first or second inning of personalisation” currently. We have not had the tools before. Given this was presumably a baseball analogy (9 innings) rather than cricket (1 or 2), there appears to be some way to go despite the targeting and personalisation opportunities being sold across the online medium.

Colin Petrie-Norris, managing director of International at Specific Media, felt that personalisation is “there now” for advertisers, but also that the “databases are not quite there yet”, and this area has not moved faster because the technology has not been there to process the information available.  One has to wonder if it is the technology or the talent within the industry to extract the key numbers from the technology – budding graduates note: high-level business-driven data analysts needed!

Tailoring and personalisation was also the goal of EPG software, reported Richard Bulwinkle, chief evangelist at Rovi – going beyond the current challenge, which is just to find it in the first instance. But despite 500 channels in the USA households, only 20 are accessed, and only 8 of those regularly, he added.

Sky was represented by commercial director, Stephen Nuttall, who felt – not unsurprisingly – that the pay TV model did have a long-term future (BBC is pay TV after all he said, before getting in a law enforcement dig). He added that one third of those using Sky’s sports app on mobile were not Sky subscribers – so this was providing further sales opportunities.