Presidential candidates in the US race have spent a mere five percent of their campaign money online. Yet this five percent, “experts” argue, may prove to be the most effective money spent swaying undecided voters. Candidates can geo-politically target potential voters with information that is judged to be of immediate concern to the voter’s profile.
CNN reports that if a Democratic candidate discusses a penalising tax for SUV drivers on a morning TV show in Ohio, GeoVoter technology can identify all the SUV drivers in the area of the show’s broadcast. Within hours of the show’s production, a Republican campaign can send each of these drivers an email designed to pique the interest (and, it is assumed, the anxiety) of these potential voters.
The Internet is an amazingly well-informed “invisible hand” that marketeers and their companies (or candidates) are increasingly adept at manipulating. But does this really mean that they manipulate the market? I would argue that we haven’t quite come to that, and perhaps never will.
Internet use is increasing apace, and studies demonstrate that more and more people spend time surfing the web. (This is probably a byproduct of the fact that few jobs allow employees to leave their computer space during the course of the work day. Even the guy who runs my gym spends 60 percent of his work time at his desk. And I suspect he is not looking at the spreadsheets covering the expense of the gym equipment–at least not the whole time.)
Further studies (and there are always further studies) determine that most surfers are looking at content, not receiving or sending information. Being an avoider of email myself, I can identify with this. People are not paying a lot of attention to the arrows that the advertisers send to their inboxes. For most of us, it’s all we can do to peruse the email from the people we care about, much less the people that care about us (or our money/vote, etc.).
What’s a poor marketeer to do?
Target the content, not the consumer. Consumers look at content, consumers love content. They seek it out. They do not seek out emails, or sms, or targeted advertising. Quite the opposite in fact.
Know your consumer, your voter, okay. Know what they like to read, watch, and listen to online. Then put the add or the information there. Let people discover what they want to care about rather than tell them what their consumer/voter profile tells them they should care about. Anybody in the virtual world or the real world can report that profiling is far from popular these days, most especially by those that are profiled.
This is still targeted advertising. But it targets content, a far less threatening concept to most consumers. No one wants to be a target, especially for technologically guided SPAM designed to conform to your profile.
Consumers personally engage with content, they duck impersonal bullet points. The most effective marketeer is the one that engages in return.
January 29th, 2008 at 10:53 am
I’m all for targeted advertising. A lot of money and energy would be saved doing so. And advertising would gain in credibility.