Is display advertising segmented by geography a waste of time?
As much as I think any improvement for display advertising is a good thing, I can’t help feeling that geographical targeting is a bit of a waste of time. On the one hand you have media that makes time and place irrelevant and then on the other you try and segment the audience based on the things that by nature of the media don’t matter. It’s something that intrinsically feels wrong to me. Surely it would be better to serve up ads based on site usage, so that if I started to look at online content about financial products then the online ads would be based on financial products, and if I started to look at geographic content then the ads would be relevant to that area.
Essentially I don’t think that display ads are direct response because they are intrusive. I’m not saying they are a bad thing because they do have a significant brand awareness role to play as part of an overall media multiplier but in and of themselves I cant help but feel that their role is to establish an ambience of brand around the content rather than demanding a click through.
Does this sound strange to anyone or is that how you view banner ads as well?
Tags: ads, advertising, Banner ads, banner advertising, brand awareness, click through, display ads, Display advertising, geographic segmentation, Media, meida multiplier, online ads, segment, site usage
Sometimes it’s really that simple, isn’t it? I feel a little stupid for not thinking of this myself/earlier, though.