Data and behavioral targeting - Adwords Tutorial

- [Instructor] Data and behavioral targeting. Here's a question, Would you rather see relevant ads targeted to you and your interests, or general, nonspecific ads meant for everybody? I think I know the answer to that. And according to the Internet Advertising Bureau, the simplest definition of programmatic is "the process of buying and selling digital media "in an automated fashion." Well, this is very simple, but it puts programmatic into a somewhat understandable framework. Anytime you automate the buying and selling of digital ads, that is programmatic. The programmatic system that you are likely most familiar with is search engine ads. These ads show above the search results when people search using specific keywords. Of course, the search ads are relevant and targeted, as they are triggered by the words you use to search with. What is referred to as programmatic advertising takes this targeting to the next step. Not only does it target ads based on search terms, but it also targets ads based on your browsing behaviors. The websites you visit and the content of the pages you read. Research shows that when people see behaviorally targeted ads, the click through rate is 600% higher than non targeted ads. To accomplish this level of personalization, data has to be gathered. This can be done through first-party data. First-party data is the websites you visit and the companies that you buy from. Or it can include third-party data. Third-party data comes from ad trackers and aggregators that track millions of anonymous users online and associate the data to their browser's digital fingerprint. The data is from a wide range of sources, and it's collected, stored, and analyzed in order to find user segments. From these segments, audiences are created. For example, people that like to travel. People that are interested in health and fitness, healthy eating or diets, frequent shoppers, car enthusiasts, and more, all by the types of websites that they visit daily or weekly or monthly, and how often they visit those sites. Then advertisers create campaigns to match these audiences. Using programmatic advertising technology, they are able to match their campaigns to the most relevant audience based on their behavioral profiles. Most people, when they think of programmatic ads, think of the traditional banner ad across the top of the page, or maybe the square ads on the side of the webpage. The traditional advertising spots. However, it is much more than that. Programmatic ads are not just static banner ads. They're rich media. They're interactive media and video. They can be seen on news sites, social sites, apps like game or weather apps, and on YouTube. Through the gathering of data on content that people read, visit, and watch, advertisers are able to find the segmented audiences they want to reach. And they create personalized, targeted campaigns based on that audience's interests. Take, for example, a travel company. Through analyzing the data, they may find frequent travelers, those who travel multiple times a year. Then they can also identify a segment of annual travelers. And finally, a segment of infrequent travelers who travel every few years. With this information they could create a campaign to sell travel, but to sell it based on the analysis of each group, and change the message to the target group. By matching the message to the audience based on their browsing history and content interests, they can increase their ability to gain new customers and increase sales. Even more, the customer is happy, because they saw ads that reflected their interests and lifestyle.