Out-of-Context Ads Prove Effective

New research casts doubt on the long-held belief that advertising is most effective when placed near content related to the product.

Yahoo! and MediaVest recently studied a group of consumers passionate about a particular subject area. Product ads displayed out of context had roughly the same impact on brand preference as identical placements shown next to related content. >>Full Story

Thoughts// Not the most ground-breaking study, but still some important data about contextual versus behavioral targeting. Logically, behavioral targeting should be a step-up from contextual targeting. Behavioral targeting takes advantage of a person's interests regardless of what website they may be browsing, while contextual targeting places ads on websites with similar content.

The article does suggest that 'the long-held belief that ads shown in context are more valuable than those seen out of context', which is almost correct. It should note that the ads shown out of context are not merely shown on an unrelated website, but to target consumers on an unrelated website...which is a big difference.

Even with these study results, advertisers should conduct their own research on which type of delivery method produces the best ROI or click-thru rate. In addition, even if your ad is targeted at the right audience, a more important factor may be the creative execution of the ad itself.

Travel Trends - Email, MySpace, Tacoda, AOL

Addicted To Email - According to a recent survey, the typical user checks their email an average of 5 times per day. In addition, 15% of those surveyed consider themselves 'addicted' to email. And most users have more than one email account...half (52%) have two or three accounts, while 22% have four or more.
http://www.mediapost.com

29,000 Sex Offenders Identified On MySpace - While certainly not a shock to anyone familiar with the ease of registering on MySpace, the news that the company has identified 29,000 sex offenders that were members of the site does cause a great deal of concern for companies using MySpace as a promotional tool. As with any ad campaign or marketing effort, attention must be paid to how the medium will affect the consumers and in this case, the repercussions of using such a public forum to deliver a brand message. The scary part of this story is that these 29,000 are only the users who registered with their real names.
http://www.adage.com

AOL Buys Ad Firm Tacoda - AOL has purchased behavioral targeting ad firm Tacoda. The deal, which brings AOL into the ad network buying frenzy, could mark an important turning point for behavioral targeting. In the past, most major portals steered clear of such ad delivering methods due to consumer privacy concerns, but with AOL clearly supporting behavorial targeting, the technology may finally clear the privacy hurtle once and for all.
http://www.cnet.com