Just in case you missed me on the ADMA Panel on Online Behavioral Advertising this morning, I thought you might find the below slides on the new industry best practice guidelines for behavioral advertising interesting (and the video amusing).

ADMA, its various counter parts and the major publishers have really done a great job to get this off the ground so quickly. By giving the public choice and informing them about behavioural targeting through the official youronlinechoices.com.au website, they have successfully countered forced legislation and avoided a 'do not track disaster' similar to the EU (for now anyway).

However, this is only the first step, it is now up to marketers to implement the guidelines and start using the behavioural data that is being collected to actually add some value to consumers through relevant advertising otherwise people will continue to feel uneasy about all the data that is being collect on them (and rightfully so).

McKinsey established sometime ago, that a coordinated end-to-end user experience across channels can lead to an increase of up to 10-20% in revenue for online businesses - and a coordinated end-to-end user experience is nothing else than targeting, delivering the right message to the right person at the right time through the right channel.

However, most marketers would know that this is actually much harder to achieve than one might think. Companies grow over time and so do their capabilities which can lead to a staggering amount of disconnected data sources and marketing platforms across various different business units resulting in a less than optimal user experience.

If the above challenge sounds familiar and you think your company could still improve the way it is trying to convert prospects or reduce churn with existing customers, then you will find the below slides from my recent presentation on cross-channel targeting at ad:tech in Singapore interesting.

The slides will show you how to effectively identify individuals online, profile and segment them across various different data sources and develop a cross-channel targeting matrix designed to improve content relevance and boost conversions. 

Ok, we're not turning into a video channel (this is the 3rd video post in a row) but this is just too cool (or scary) to only share on Twitter as a link. The Nestle speaker at the ADMA Data Day in Brisbane just talked about a revolutionary new outdoor targeting technology in Japan similar to what some of you might remember from the film 'Minority Report'. 

Check out the video below for a glimpse into the future: Targeted billboard ads based on facial recognition! You can say what you want but the Japanese do innovate.

ADMA just launched the Australian Best Practice Guideline for Online Behavioural Advertising below last week in close cooperation with pretty much all major industry associations and publishers. 

The move is designed to show that the Australian industry is able to regulate itself in the hope of increasing consumer trust in this form of online advertising as well as to avoid potentially damaging regulation.

One key distinction that is being made in the document, is that the guidelines only apply to 3rd party behavioural analytics and targeting across unrelated online properties but not to the standard and much more common 1st party web analytics and re-targeting on your own online properties. In other words, tracking people across unrelated websites to build a profile on their interests by publishers will be regulated from now on, however tracking and re-targeting prospects and customers on your own websites is still covered through your standard privacy policy and not impacted at all. 

Visit the article on the ADMA website for more information or come along to the ADMA Cloud Computing breakfast this Friday morning in Sydney for a chance to ask Brendan O’Connor, Minister for Privacy and Freedom of Information, about his take on the guidelines.

What are you doing with your customer address data? Nothing or not enough? Then join us next Wednesday evening, the 23rd of February, for a presentation from Robert Dommett, Technical Director of RDA Research and 20 year veteran of geo-segmentation for his perspective on the current usage of geo-demographics and vision for the future.

New perspectives on geo-demographics knowledge integration, multi-channel execution and global standardisation: For many years, geo-demographics has been a workhorse of the direct mail, retail and risk industries. Often out of favour and considered un-sexy by many in the industry, geo-demographics is enjoying a resurgence as a multi-channel integration framework.

Email councils@adma.com.au or visit the ADMA Data & Analytics Council Meetup page now to register for the event.