Toward the end of the year, annual predictions come out (I’ve been guilty of this for nearly ten years now). I was perusing these from Triggit founder Zach Coelius, and his ninth one hit me right between the eyes:
Retargeting will be taken out of the tactic box marketers have been myopically placing it into, and instead they will recognize that retargeting is simply the first step to a sophisticated data driven marketing strategy.
Retargeting, or the practice of showing you ads from sites you’ve recently visited, is all over the web these days, and many folks revile the practice. But as Zach points out, retargeting isn’t the end game, it’s just the beginning.
It’s actually a good thing that we as consumers are waking up to the fact that marketers know a lot about us – because we also know a lot about ourselves, and about what we want. Only when we can exchange value for value will advertising move to a new level, and begin to drive commercial experiences that begin to feel right. That will take an informed public that isn’t “creeped out” or dismissive of marketing, but rather engaged and expectant – soon, we will demand that marketers pay for our attention and our data – by providing us better deals, better experiences, and better service. This can only be done via a marketing ecostystem that leverages data, algorithms, and insight at scale. And we are well into building that ecosystem – to my mind, it’s an artifact of humanity that is far larger and more significant than my original idea of the Database of Intentions.
More on that soon, but for now, just a short note to point to Zach’s post. It’s going to be a very exciting year to be in our industry. Expect my predictions, and round up of how I did in 2012, in the coming week or two.