Jonathan Slavin, CRO of CPX Interactive wrote a compelling piece today on iMediaconnection entitled: “The new targeting strategy you should know.” It’s really worth a read.
His basic premise is that the cookie, introduced with the advent of the Netscape Navigator browser in 1997, “has begun to show its age, and while the expectations of online marketers have evolved, the strategies for targeting online audiences largely have not. Now more than ever before, there is a desire for a new targeting paradigm that delivers on the promise of pinpoint focus and scalable reach.”
Rather, he supports the use of IP targeting. Why? “IP audience targeting is an online targeting strategy that brings the strength, accuracy, and flexibility of offline direct-mail campaigns into the online era by mapping IP address ranges to real-world addresses and leverages the publicly available information known about those addresses.” Think income, home value, political affiliation and purchase behaviors for hundreds of products.
He raises a number of very compelling points, not the least if which is the pool of “live” cookies available at any given time. “Forrester Research recently surveyed data service providers and the largest search and ad networks and estimated that “active” cookie coverage at any given time was approximately 34 percent of the online population: ComScore Media Metrix, Inc. estimated 40 percent and JupiterResearch estimated 38 percent. At a high level, this means that from the online population of 200 million people in the U.S., it is likely that no more than 75 to 80 million people are active at any given time.” Insane.
I’ll end by saying that I LOVE the idea of digital kickin’ it old school by adopting the same methods used by the direct mail industry since, well, dinosaurs disappeared from the planet. See kids, you can learn something from your parents.
Northampton Consulting 