Kristi Barrow

An interesting piece of research came out yesterday from Audience Science proclaiming consumers prefer behavioural advertising to contextual advertising online. It makes a lot of sense, people are more likely to be interested in ads that appeal to them, rather than advertising which is confined to the context of what they are currently looking at.

However the research used to come up with this statement is based on a Forrester research study where they asked around 1,600 people the following question:

“Please indicate to what extent each statement describes your attitudes: I pay more attention to online ads directly related to my online activity (contextual); I pay more attention to online ads that fit my specific interests (behavioral).”

I struggled to understand what was being asked and I work in marketing! I can’t imagine every respondent fully understood what this question was asking.  According to the survey

“65 % responding that they are more receptive to BT, and only 35% saying they paid more attention to contextual ads”

I look forward to a more robust study using real data based on customers actions following exposure to behavioural vs contextual advertising.  This will be much more valuable that simply asking consumers what they like!

Read the press release – Independent Study Finds that Online Shoppers are More Receptive to Behaviorally Targeted Ads than Contextual Ads