By Chris Lee

Brands are failing to connect with their target audiences and wasting money on ineffective campaigns, according to research carried out by ad network Collective. The company found that just a quarter (25 per cent) of consumers believed that targeted ads were relevant to them in some way, although more than half of respondents (57 per cent) said that consumers would prefer targeted ads over a “blanket approach” if it meant there were fewer ads.

According to Collective’s UK managing director, Steven Filler, the findings demonstrate that while consumers are receptive to receiving targeted messages, but also that the current approach is failing to connect brands with their audiences.

The UK is the largest market in the European Union for online advertising, accounting for 30 per cent of spend in the market, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB). With online ad spend continuing to increase despite the wider downturn the challenge now for marketers is to make their ads more impactful.

Failure to launch

So how is that despite so much information being available to make consumers so much easier to target, that brands are failing to connect?

Mark Redgrave, CEO of OpenAmplify, a natural language processing technology firm, said that one reason was that systems currently used by publishers and ad networks are based on traditional keyword targeting, which is far too simplistic. 

“Keyword technology looks for individual words, but has no comprehension of meaning,” he told NMK. “It sees the post ‘man, I hate Avatar’, finds the word ‘Avatar’, thinks ‘movies’ and then triggers an ad for the Avatar DVD - not exactly relevant for the user or the advertiser. This sounds unreal but it actually happens.”

According to Redgrave, there is also a broader cultural issue with advertisers focusing on volume over value, “seduced by the sheer number of ads they can place for minimal cost.” 

Increasing engagement

Budget-holders should instead focus on improving the targeting and the effectiveness of their online ads, even if it comes at a premium cost, according to Redgrave.

“Brands are increasingly seeing the value of listening to - and engaging directly with - consumers through social media and the advertising market needs to do the same,” he concluded. “With hundreds of millions of conversations taking place online every day, the opportunity exists for brands to understand and engage with what people are really saying and feeling: what they love, hate, and what they intend to do. Any ad network that can harness the wealth of information and identify the key topics, sentiment and actions expressed in text can improve both the effectiveness of advertising and the consumer experience.”