There's no hiding it. In the advertising industry, we make our livelihood by influencing the hearts and minds of consumers to open their wallets and buy our client's products. Urban Advertising doesn't try to conceal that truth and wants people to celebrate it with a T-shirt that proudly proclaims, "I'm being exploited by an ad agency." Now, when asked by our friends what we do all day, we don't have to go into a long-winded explanation - we can just buy them a shirt and they'll get the message.
Contextual ad firm Adrelief has introduced a new product that combines the benefits of behavioral marketing's demographic database/site behavior targeting capabilities with contextual marketing's content focused targeting. Even though part of Adrelief's offering is creative services to develop the many versions of creative needed to make this approach effective, some believe the industry isn't ready because of its partial reliance on static and rich media banners - creative that is not easily changed on the fly.
The introduction of this technology begs for another. One which would, in effect, develop static and rich media creative on the fly using a templated approach. Optimally, an approach whereby several graphic and text variables for the same unit of creative are developed, then cobbled together on the fly based on Adrelief's - or any other's - targeted delivery system.
Recently launched Dotomi offers Direct Messaging which provides a step towards the templated approach by delivering database targeted ads to consumers by name and self-expressed interests. It's not clear whether behavioral targeting capabilities are part of the offering. While Dotomi does not provide behavioral targeting (and has no plans to) and is purely opt-in, it's not inconceivable that such an on-the-fly ad building technology would see the light of day or be in development already by other vendors. It's always easier said than done but it really boils down to one served ad unit simply "calling" for multiple creative elements rather than a single element to build the ad.
