The Online Advertising Playbook: Proven Strategies and Tested Tactics from The Advertising Research Foundation

Purchase-Based Category Targeting

Purchase-based targeting is one of the newer targeting approaches made possible by online tracking of consumer behavior and integrating that information with related data. Purchase-based targeting serves ads to web surfers whose online personas suggest that they are in a brand’s target market. This targeting approach begins with a careful study of a brand’s segments and then identifies characteristic qualities they exhibit. Then, marketers look for a distinctive fingerprint of online behaviors that predict that characteristic. Marketers might want to target the heavy half of category buyers or brand-loyal consumers, for example. “Heavy shaving gel users,” ACNielsen researchers explain, “spend a great deal of time at sports sites, online auction sites, and automotive sites, but spend very little time at bulletin board sites. Low-carb product users spend more time at health and wellness sites” (Khandelwal et al. 2004).

Purchase-based targeting is claimed to be more efficient than random targeting, by about 70% with less waste. But does this additional precision really matter? To find out, ACNielsen’s Manjima Khandelwal and colleagues tested the branding and sales impacts of purchase-based targeted advertising for a newly launched brand extension for a personal care product.

Purchase-Based Targeting for Branding and Sales: Personal Care Product

Just how do brands find the fingerprints that predict which consumers are in the target group? For a new ...