How do we do targeted advertising? Let´s take the following example: How do we deliver a message to medical doctors in USA? How do we design a digital advertising campaign for medical doctors in USA?
By strategically designing, executing, launching, testing and adjusting two Google AdWords Display Network campaigns, targeted by the following content variables in USA:
- Topics: medical topics.
- Website addresses (URL): medical journals websites, medical associations websites and medical media websites.
Other Google AdWords Display Network variables do not work in this case, such as age, gender, interests, buying intent, keywords.
We cannot execute a similar campaign using the other available advertising big databases in Internet such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo, Skype, Amazon, EBay; since these databases do not target content variables. Google is the only digital advertising provider that offers content targeting in Internet. Google competitors only offer persons targeting. None of the big databases advertising companies offer a medical doctor database. LinkedIn target business profession, however it does not target medical doctors. So, the only way we can target medical doctors is by targeting medical content. Tough case.
Let´s review the big databases variables and number of users for each of the above Internet advertising companies, and compare them with Google Display Network database variables and number of users.
| Internet company | Number of users (millions) | Database targeting variables |
| 4.000 | Persons: Geographic location, age, gender, interests, buying intents. Content: Keywords, topics, websites addresses (URL).
| |
| 1.800 | Persons: Geographic location, age, gender, interests, language, schools, place of work, marital status. | |
| 500 | Persons: Geographic location, age, gender, interests. | |
| 500 | Persons: Geographic location, company name, company industry, company size, job title, job function, job seniority, skills, schools, degrees, fields of study, age, gender. | |
| 300 | Persons: Geographic location, language, age, gender, interests, followers, keywords. | |
| Yahoo | 150 | Persons: Geographic location, age, gender, interests. |
| Skype | 300 | Persons: Geographic location, age, gender. |
| Amazon | 200 | Persons: Interests, shopping behavior. Products: Type |
| EBay | 165 | Persons: Interests, shopping behavior. |
From the above table we can see the reasons why Google is the gorilla game over dominator in the digital advertising business. It is not only the 4,000 million big database users, but also Google is the only digital advertising provider that has a content big database for the advertiser to target users through contents in internet.
All of the above big databases are not 100% accurate yet, that is why the advertisers have to do testing and adjustment for every campaign until they get the right audience in Internet.
As time goes by, and artificial intelligence begins to act in the Internet algorithms, these above databases will be more accurate in time. For the time being advertisers have to learn how to use these big databases for targeting their campaigns and they also have to learn how to test and adjust every campaign.
Digital advertising is the future of advertising, and big database targeted advertising is the future of digital advertising. Traditional advertising will not be able to compete with big databases digital advertising. It is not possible. Traditional advertising does not have big databases as specific as digital advertising has.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will play a key role in targeted advertising and Google seems to dominate the process of database accuracy with AI. For the time being inaccuracy has to be balanced with testing and adjusting.
This article was written by Julio Sanoja Rial, CEO & Founder of LeAds, a digital marketing and advertising agency that you can visit at www.msalesleads.com
You can read our previous article in the following link:
https://www.msalesleads.com/can-facebook-beat-google-in-the-digital-advertising-business/
