Below is my response to an assignment associated with the online course, Digital Marketing Analytics in Theory, by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Assignment Purpose.
This exercise aims to review the data opportunities and problems provided by new media. We’ll also discuss the benefits and drawbacks of retargeting strategies to create customized adverts.
Assignment Specifics.
Question:
The article “New Ways Marketers Are Manipulating Data to Influence You” discusses retargeting, a new approach to targeted advertising that gathers and examines customer data (including credit card usage patterns and online browsing behaviors) to present tailored advertisements.
Discuss if you personally support the use of retargeting to provide tailored advertisements.
Give a justification for your position.
Response.
Personally, I’m not a fan of systems that track my personal activity like my online activity or my purchase history. I’m also not a fan of online advertisements, like banner ads, which is why I use ad-blocking software that reduces the number of online advertisements I’m shown while I’m surfing the web.
Though I’m not in support of retargeting-marketing efforts when I’m the consumer being marketed to I am, however, in support of retargeting-marketing efforts that help ensure that consumers, who do prefer to receive advertisements, receive advertisements that are more tailored to the content that they have an interest in versus content that they have no interest in.
My belief is that most consumers know that brands are tracking their purchases, search and browsing history and that most consumers have accepted this as a normal process of utilizing the internet. Brands need to do a better job of educating consumers about their tracking, retargeting, and advertising efforts. Brands can educate consumers about this in a more effective manner. For instance, they can notify consumers via short and engaging content that informs the consumer that the consumer has approved these activities, which can be done via short video content, short audio content and short text content that is delivered to the consumer in multiple ways. I also believe that brands can remind consumers that their information is being tracked and that they are being retargeted for advertisement and other activities.
Overall, retargeting-marketing makes sense as a tool to better tailor how advertisements are delivered to consumers so that consumers are receiving information that they want versus information that is completely unwanted. the challenge that brands have is in properly educating consumers to ensure that they are aware that they have agreed to be tracked and retargeted for advertisements because. Brands that do a better job of this will help build their perceived integrity with consumers and thus improve consumer trust in their brand.