When you think about advertising, you probably think that all the power lies in the hands of the advertisers. These days when someone wants to advertise they can do a fundamental narrowing down of demographics and pay for click through or even purchase by the customer.
So what power was given to the customers? Customers using the Internet can usually, in theory, be narrowed down by what they are looking at. But is this really true? No. If you want to target someone, you have to give the choice to them to tell you what they are interested in, not based by what site they are on or what keyword they searched for.
When most marketers market, their basic intentions are good and seem to be sound. Whatever I’m looking at, well that must mean I’m interested in things related to that. Or if I am looking at a site about a certain subject I must want to know everything about the subject and therefore all subject matter in this particular category. But what marketers fail to understand is the relationship between products. If I am looking at beer, that means I could be interested in a cooler, swimming trunks, sunglasses, and a volleyball. How are AdWords going to help you here? I’m not really interested in beer and all the exotic drinks that I could drink on a Saturday afternoon, I’m really interested in where I can go outdoors and get a tan while drinking beer.
So who has the power now? If the power was given to the customer, then a simple description of what I am doing or planning to do can bring all the clients related to this activity right to my computer. It doesn’t really matter what I am doing right now, it matters what I am going to do, the bigger picture.
