So, I’m out in San Francisco for the second week running. This week it’s for the Ad:Tech conference on marketing and advertising. Basically, I had enough time to go home for the weekend, watch some rugby and play my new Nintendo Wii. Fun times!
Thoughts on Behavioral Targeting in Advertising in Africa
Advertising and marketing, especially online, is an ever-changing beast. I just sat through a good session on behavioral targeting, and wish I had a chance to discuss some of my thoughts on that with some of Africa’s leading websites and news portals. Is anyone doing any behavioral targeting in African advertising?
If I were an advertiser on any of the African online newspaper sites or forums, I would like to make sure my money was being used to target the demographics that wanted my services. For instance, if I have a product that is better for locals at the country level versus wanting to only reach people in the African diaspora in Europe. It’s a big difference and means a lot to me as far as ROI goes.
Of course, there’s a difference in brand marketing and actually trying to get a transaction, but that just provides another difference that I wonder if the platforms are reaching out to?
April 24, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Key to behavioral targeting is gathering colossal amounts of data – and useful data at that. Yahoo, MSN and AOL have been doing this for years and developed the necessary software. Companies like DoubleClick can also help build demographical data.
As far as Africa goes – I don’t think there’s enough data to perform behavioral targeting. Also the number of users online hasn’t hit a critical mass – so naturally broad targeting is the only option available.
The closest alternatives to behavioral targeting are:
1. GeoTargeting by Country/Region/City (Ip Address)
2. Advertising on sites that target niche groups of people
April 24, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Good point David. Running Mashada.com for all these years, I can see how at least geographic data could be helpful for you when talking to advertisers.
I’d like to know about big media sites too though, whether it’s the Nigerian Tribune or the Kenya Nation, they have to have some idea of who their users are at a more stratified level. This could be geographic or it could be behavioral. I guess I’m just wondering if any of them use this type of segmentation in their ad serving?
Thanks for your input on your forums though. There’s one question answered.
April 25, 2007 at 9:18 am
Behavioural targetting can meen a lot of things and there isnt reallly enough african online advertisers to warrant targetting based n that. If you’ve ever had time to check out the ad source code of a big social network like hi5 you will notice your date of birth and sex is in their source code. Thats what its all about nowadays building a complete profile of your users and delivering ads based on that, traditional tv advertising is on its way out.