Web advertisers debate the merits of 'micro-targeting'

The more precisely you can target a Web viewer according to his browsing habits, the more likely you are of converting him into a customer. Few dispute this, but some are arguing today over whether this level of targeting is a job they'd happily outsource.

NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - "For the next few years, content and advertising are going to become much more specific for individuals on the Web." That was the proclamation this morning from David Moore, Chairman and CEO of 24/7 Real Media, the online advertising services provider acquired last May by Madison Avenue powerhouse WPP Group. Moore's comments came as part of a panel discussion this afternoon at the OnMedia NYC conference, sponsored by AlwaysOn.

Ad agencies are continuing to expend enormous resources in an effort to find ways to target exactly the right viewers on behalf of their clients, based on their online behavior. But with substantial opposition to the notion that any one agency or company should maintain a database of users' behavior patterns, that effort will continue to face big roadblocks.

Online ad agencies these days are active services, like software. Their objective is to reach people based not so much on who they are as what they're doing, Moore said, and a lot of that can be presupposed by a viewer's typical schedule. For instance, business-related ads run during the weekday mornings and early afternoons, and leisure-related ads run during the evenings or weekends...but in both cases, running in categories that apply to the specific viewer.

The process is called micro-targeting -- zeroing in on a specific reader, and delivering content that applies to his recorded personal criteria.

One example of an innovative micro-targeting approach cited by Moore and other panelists today is called "mapvertising," a term coined by online map ad service provider Lat49. With partners such as MapQuest, Lat49 delivers ads based on geographic and other contextual criteria -- for instance, a search for restaurants or hardware stores within a given area. Clients purchase the right to have precedence over their chosen service or product category, but Lat49 sells that precedence on a region-by-region basis.

Moore pointed to this as one example of an advertising arrangement that benefits everyone. For example, a site hosting the map indirectly -- not MapQuest itself, per se, but another commercial site that uses its maps -- can receive some of the ad revenue from impressions on maps. Services such as Lat49 serve as intermediaries in this case, and their business models are simple because they get a fixed cut as well.

Intermediaries would be more effective for both clients and Web viewers, Moore said, if the research they conducted on viewers' online behavior could span multiple sites. Right now, cookies are site-specific, though they're the tools online analytics and behavior tracking services tend to use most frequently. In a more viable and perhaps more valuable scheme, the behavior of one viewer on one Web site tracked by one intermediary on behalf of one client, could still be available to that client as the viewer transcended the site's boundaries.

But not everyone wants to get in on this act, especially certain giants who have made their fortune, if you will, in the print sector.

Speaking on behalf of publishers who have Web interests and whose advertising divisions sell both print and online inventory, Forbes.com president Jim Spanfeller said his operation, and others like his, don't want to deal with intermediaries. Why should they, when they have effective salespeople already who have every right to keep their cut?

But that doesn't mean Forbes.com isn't interested in micro-targeting. It is very appealling to this publisher to be able to direct and deliver content to readers using criteria that's much more granular than the typical "male 18-to-39"-style demographics that have dominated the industry for decades.

But they want to be the ones to find those more granular readership segments, not hire someone else to locate the corporate-minded, affluent readers typically associated with Forbes, and learn where they're located and what they're doing.

The OnMedia NYC conference continues through tomorrow.