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"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."
--- John Wanamaker (1838 - 1922) This is why advertising has been such a profitable business. That's because targeting of traditional advertising system is not good. As a result, traditional marketing has to be attention-driven. You have no better choice other than throwing trillions of dollars to attract attentions, and hopefully several percent of the attracted attentions will be finally converted to your new customers so that your business can continuously run. As a matter of fact, a huge amount of your marketing costs are completely wasted, and it is necessary due to low efficiency of the advertising model. This well-known fact is clearly shown that the low efficient classical display advertising model need be disrupted and replaced. Fortunately, with the help of Internet and advancement of information processing technology, targeting will be significantly improved, and it has to be improved. However, it could not be attention-based, because attention is intrinsically low efficient on targeting. It has to be intention-based, which is intrinsically well targeted and accurate. For instance, with prior knowledge of your intention on buying some orange juice in front of a Trader Joe's, I will recommend you some good juices. It will be interesting information to me instead of advertisements. On the contrary, it will be totally annoying to me if you shout out at me about some high-end computers just because you know I'm a computer science student or a software programmer, but you don't know I just bought a super cool Macbook last week and don't need a new computer in next few months or even years. To solve the targeting issue, intention-based marketing systems will be an ideal alternative to current dominant attention-driven marketing systems. Attracting attention is surely helpful. But it has to be complementary, not the primary driving force. It will be intention-based and intention-driven systems that can significantly improve targeting accuracy and marketing efficiency. That is the future! |