The world of online advertising is shifting. As it stands, the majority of online advertisers trace their leads by tracking the online habits of consumers through the placement of cookies and pixels. When a customer visits a website, the site places a cookie that will, ideally, track the customer's browsing habits over the next 30 to 60 days. Advertisers use the patterns revealed by this information to make targeted offers to the customers they believe are most likely to purchase the goods and services they provide. However, there are several problems with this approach.
Consumers don't like having their habits tracked online. The result is that those who are aware of the practice may clear their browsers of cookies and pixels at least once a day, perhaps more. There are even internet security programs that aid this process by sending a notification every time a cookie is placed and gives users the option to remove it. Not only does this indicate that cookie-tracking is intrusive and unpopular among consumers, but it leads to an advertising strategy that targets, at the most, only 40 percent of a qualified audience.
It also results in offers being sent to unqualified audiences. After all, just because a young man enjoys reading up on Ferraris doesn't mean that he has the income to make the purchase at this stage in his life. Cookie-tracking would indicate him as a potential candidate, but in reality, the lead was a dead-end from the start. Reliance on cookies often leads to wasted resources.
Semcasting's IP Audience Zones pursues a more sophisticated avenue. It doesn't use cookies or place pixels. Instead, it takes a more comprehensive approach, using advanced segmentation and geo-location microtargetingthat identifies the ideal audience to receive an advertiser's offer based on factors such as life stage, affluence, political affiliations, ownership and position in life. Using these strategies, Semcasting is able to open up 100 percent of the qualified audience while still respecting online users' rights to privacy.
With their privacy-friendly approach, Semcasting has produced a proprietary database of over 227 million individuals and 126 million households, featuring over 750 demographic variables that businesses can use to target their largest qualified audience. With access to this data, companies can reach that extra 60 percent of potential buyers and dramatically increase their sales.
Ray Kingman