Smart Ads - Behavioral Marketing

URL: Yahoo Customized PPC Ads

I have been reading about this stuff for several months, and now Yahoo! has launched something to attempt the customization on the fly that everyone has been talking about.

All issues of the timing of their launch aside...(couldn't they have at least done it in a different MONTH from the iPhone?)...this is a direction that many are seeing as a significant shift.

As advertisers look for more and more of your information, the technology and smart search capabilities are only going to grow. As a marketer, you need to ask yourself about the latest gadget and technique. Learn about this and consider it a great option - smart display ads that you can shift and change depending on the consumer searching somewhere where you want to be found.

A warning for the marketer in the audience...DON'T neglect your content. In the rush for more and more specific information about WHO will buy ... don't forget that these are people who are finding you.

Give them something to read, or listen to, or look at...

And most most most importantly...give them something remarkable to share with others.

Look for my upcoming post on the tenets of "Authentic Content" ... coming this afternoon!

Start At The End...interactive-like

Great Point from Stephanie Diamond from The Marketing Message Blog.

First: Figure out who your audience is. (Easy enough to say...and everyone thinks they know who that is)

Second: Learn about that group's tendencies on the web.

Third: Devise the smoothest, most sensible method of putting yourself or your service or your product or your content right where your target people are already residing.

Take a look:

URL: Web Strategies that Cater to Customers

Pick Your Battles

Once again, Seth Godin takes a small observation about marketing and makes it stand for a much larger point.
The point of Seth's blog post "Most and Least" is that most of the time we do the least that is required of us. It is virtually impossible to always do the MOST that you can do.

Even if you set out to do the most, you will have to pick the times when you really push it and do the most. The rest of the time, you are just getting the job done.

One observation I have, however, is that whether you are an individual or a company, once you get in the habit of doing the least (just getting by), it is hard to flip the switch and suddenly do the most remarkable stuff.

When you are doing the least, your perception of the Most is diminished. For a company, that is when you start thinking that offering the red fishing pole would have made all the difference over the brown fishing pole, or that the pale blue background on the banner ad was less successful than the dark blue background.

From an interactive marketing standpoint, I think that Seth's post is a cry for authenticity.

Here is the post: Most and Least from Seth Godin