It may come as no surprise, but spending on advertising has continued to rise. Display-related advertising in particular, which includes banner ads, rich media, digital video, sponsorships and similar items, totaled more than $5.5 billion in the first half of 2011 alone.
Display advertising rose 27.1 percent over the same period in 2010, substantially exceeding the previous year’s growth rate of 16 percent, according to reports released by the International Advertising Bureau (IAB).
In fact, display advertising accounted for 37 percent of all interactive ad spending in the first half of 2011, topped only by search engine advertising, which made up 49 percent, according to IAB.
With search and display ads contributing 86 percent of the total spending on advertising thus far in 2011, the problem that still remains is that most campaigns are still geared toward driving a consumer to click on a specific ad. This relies on the assumption that those clicks will translate to sales, which, as advertisers and marketers are painfully aware, isn't always the case.
Another issue with this type of advertising is that it too-often relies on the placement of cookies and pixel trackers placed on online consumer's browsers. Many users feel that these devices violate their privacy and take extra pains to delete them, and if the consumer doesn't delete them, they expire after 30 days. There's even software platforms available just for this purpose. Because of this, it's estimated that ads that depend on these trackers reach only 40 percent of their intended audience. That means that, despite spending more on an advertising campaign, not all ads are being seen by the proper prospects.
If you're going to make a significant advertising investment, make sure you’re spending your display dollars effectively. Rather than relying on point-and-click tactics of cookie and pixel-based targeting, a better approach is to strategically target the right customers for your products and services based on real demographic data.
Semcasting offers privacy-friendly IP targeting that doesn't rely on the placement of cookies or pixels to get results. IP Audience Zones offers increased targeting capability that draws from demographic, psychographic and buyer data to create over 400,000 target-ready online audience zones with more than 50 million demographic combinations. Customers are targeted down to the sub-zip code level and identified into similar demographic "clusters," allowing companies to reach consumers in their ideal setting, their "digital neighborhoods."
Ray Kingman