Privacy has become a term with a definition but no expression or reality. Buyers and prospects will greatly dispse any program that is percieved as destroying whatever privacy they have left.

If you just measure this by click-through rates, you’re right - the most awesome targeted search advertising gets 100x the click-through of a badly targeted banner.

What i’m surprised by over and over is the measures that people use to decide what media spend to have, and the utter lack of creativity in the banner ads themselves. If you believe that people make purchase decisions due to search, why not use the banner ad to prompt a search? Make the media work together.

If you fail to make this distinction the discussion fails.

The “geewhiz” gizmo geekiness of new tactics, many times, overwhelms the need of the marketer to produce an acceptable ROI. Testing and careful measurement of results, of any marketing campaign, is the only way to determine the effectiveness of any medium or tactic. The same is true of the particular chosen strategy. However, if the strategy is wrong, no tactic will provide acceptable results. And by the same token, if the tactic is wrong, the strategy will have no effect. And beyond that the strategy and the tactic must “match.”

Even before that is analyzed, the product or service must meet the buyers need, the strategy must speak to the buyers preception of the need, and the tactic(s) must meet the buyers preference for collecting information about that particular problem or need. In the end all of this comprises the task of marketing. You can’t leave off the wheels, or the brakes, or the steering wheel and the car will fail to meet the expectations of the buyer. Of course, the same goes for any marketing campaign.

Why doesn’t Fortune Magazine give me a password to use on their website, track what I view (maybe a business software article), then follow-up with my magazine next month with an extra ad or two for business software?

If Sports Illustrated knew that I check out golf scores frequently on their cnnsi.com website, they could send me my magazine next month filled with golf and Arizona/Florida travel ads.

Why don’t the cable companies who offer DVR track the programming I watch (e.g. HGTV), then provide targeted ads for local advertisers that fit with the programming (hardware and lawn care stores)?

The answer is probably “That old media advertising isn’t sexy.” Which is probably why it would be massively successful.

Might you even remotely be interested in any of this stuff? They’ve no idea who you are or what you’re into.

Consumers click on good ads placed so that they can see them and ignore bad poorly placed ads. But they do the same with navigation elements — confusing, irrelevant, and out-of-the-way doesn’t get clicks.