Domain Targeting: More Bang for the Buck
Domain targeting has unlimited applications in online advertising. Yet it really hasn't caught on. Here's how to get a message across in an age when few ad banners truly jump off the page.
Domain targeting has unlimited applications in online advertising. Yet it really hasn't caught on. Here's how to get a message across in an age when few ad banners truly jump off the page.
Flash back to a couple of years ago. DoubleClicker Chris Theodoros was sitting at his desk, thinking of a cool way to send a targeted message to the folks at Katz. Chris’s girlfriend (now wife), Laura, had announced her departure from Katz after spending several years there. Chris was trying to think of a way to thank Katz for all the wonderful times Laura had experienced there. Then it hit him.
Chris constructed a 468 x 60 banner thanking Katz. He then put the banner into the DART system and ran it across the DoubleClick Network, targeting the Katz domain. Anytime someone surfing from the Katz domain came across a DoubleClick Network site, he or she saw the banner. Over the course of the next few days, Chris heard about the effect his banner had on the Katz staff — several Katz employees were so impressed by it that they had placed phone calls to Laura, asking how it had been executed.
As time goes by, I find myself relating this anecdote to online marketers and advertisers very frequently. It’s a great example of granular targeting, low-cost advertising, and creative thinking. It’s also, unfortunately, an example of a terrific targeting method that hasn’t really caught on.
Domain targeting has a nearly unlimited number of applications in online advertising. Not only does it allow for targeting of very specific audiences, but it also allows a marketer to address those audiences with unique messages. This targeting method offers some very cool possibilities:
Many networks and large sites are capable of executing campaigns using this targeting method. However, there’s one little hitch: Most ad servers aren’t capable of predicting the number of ads they can serve to a specific domain. If you utilize domain targeting, it’s best to approach it by allocating capped budgets to the sites on your buy and then watching your reports very carefully. Once you get a couple weeks’ worth of data back, you can revise your allocations accordingly by projecting the number of ads you will serve in the future.
Despite this, domain targeting is a terrific way to target ads with little waste and to address your targets specifically, with a message that cuts through clutter. You can bet that if I were ever surfing the Web one day and came across a banner that was emblazoned with “Hey, Mezzina Brown employee!” I’d definitely click on it to see who had made the effort to target my company specifically. In an age when few ad banners truly jump off the page at a prospect, domain targeting is a great way to get a message across.