It's easy to question whether Invite
Media, a company that helps advertisers and agencies to buy media
in real-time marketplaces, was worth the $70m paid by Google or
whether Admeld, a start-up that helps publishers to sell into such
marketplaces, will justify the reported $400m price tag.
Dotcom 2.0 sceptics will wonder
whether Facebook is really worth its latest $100bn valuation. And
whether those that operate in the Facebook ecosystem, such as Buddy
Media, recently valued at $150m, will also prove their value.
However, those who believe these price
tags could be justified look at the common idea behind all these
highly valued companies. What all these business promise is one to
one marketing at scale.
The sceptics amongst us will say that
it was promised - and not delivered - in the 1990s. However, this
time it seems that the marketers' dream of technology that allows
them to greet each consumer with a customised offer and message
aligned with their needs and interests could be reality.
Customer Relationship Management and
the Internet have given us the tools to segment users and send
targeted messages - but those segments are still very large. Very
often, customisation doesn't go much further than being addressed
by the correct name.
Previous technology was simply not
able to generate enough understanding about each consumer to build
micro-segments and approach each consumer with a customised
offer.
In 2011, however, it seems to be
ready. As consumer spend more and more time online, they allow
marketers to learn more about their interests via anonymous
profiles. On platforms such as Facebook, people tell the world more
about their interests than most marketers would feel comfortable to
use. Similarly research companies are finding more and more data in
the digital space.
This allows media planning to be
replaced by audience planning, where the message seen is determined
by the profile of the person watching not the channel or content
they are viewing.
Technology determines the most
relevant campaign for that user and dynamic creative, which
assembles messages from dozens of components, delivers a
personalised ad that has millions of potential iterations.
Across Europe, Dell is already using
such dynamic creative to change 10s of different elements in its
online ads to ensure that the offer relates to a consumer's
previous browsing history at the Dell site, driving massively
improved performance.
Part of the basis of the valuations
being put on platforms such as Groupon or Facebook Places is thanks
to their ability to customise the offer based on the location of
the user.
The idea of individualisation is not
new. A good salesman could always pitch the right product for each
customer by selecting the most relevant sales offer. Technologies
such as call-centres or configurators on websites allow brands to
build mass-offers for large groups.
What the new platforms and
technologies are finally delivering is mass-individualisation. This
allows us to reach millions of people at low cost of mass-media
while also giving them the customised message of the good salesman.
The effect is to drive up ROI by more than 100% in many cases and
potentially decrease the costs of marketing.
The million or billion dollar price
tags being cited are a demonstration of the belief that investors
have in these technologies and the companies that build them.
The good news for marketers is that
they can access such technology through agencies like MediaCom at
low cost. In fact they only investment they need to make is to put
in the time and effort to understand the opportunity, to test and
learn and to utilise technologies of mass-individualisation.
Not only will they benefit but so too
will their consumers. The massive increase in uptake from messaging
that uses all the potential of mass individualisation shows how
highly consumers also value these kind of relevant and targeted
offers.
štítky
: