The New Marketing: June 2006

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Harmless Cookies

By Jim Bonfield

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you.
     Online marketers realize it makes good business sense to put their best offers in front of people who have the greatest likelihood of being interested.
     Many thousands of users all over the world click in and out of web pages every minute. How is it possible to segment this volume of beehive-like info seekers in real time, and over an extended period of time, in a way that allows sophisticated targeting?
     Some methods are more obvious than others. Take registration, for example. This is a pretty straightforward request: “Please tell us who you are; so we can get better at selling stuff to you.” Mandatory registration is a bit off-putting. But consider the alternative: paying to read that story.
     Arguably, one of the most successful of all registration-based websites is The New York Times. Its site requires registration to read most content areas. This is what the registration area has to say on the matter: “By requiring registration, we are able to offer people around the world free-of-charge access to news, reviews and more.”
     In more direct terms, the media company is saying, “Look, this is world-class, free content; if you want to keep it free, we’ll trade you. Tell us who you are and what you are interested in, so we can target you with ads more likely to be of interest to you. Your response to those ads will be more positive, and our advertisers will likely be willing to pay more to reach you, allowing us to keep this content free — at least until we feel that we can charge you and advertise to you like cable TV does.”
Continued...

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