Online ad network BlueLithium recently partnered with General Motor’s UK division in order to manage the company’s online brand advertising, based on success with customer acquisition for its Vauxhall line.
British automaker Vauxhall, maker of the Corsa, Astra and Zafira models, was able to reduce the cost of obtaining online leads by 50 percent utilizing BlueLithium’s behavioral targeting technology earlier this year.
“BlueLithium take a different approach to behavioral targeting to most other networks and technology firms,” said Dakota Sullivan, chief marketing officer at BlueLithium, San Jose, CA.
He said that rather than using pre-canned behavior models the network reassess a consumers behavior based on each individual campaign, acting on trends for a certain type of customer.
This approach to behavior targeting used data from Vauxhall’s brand campaign and tactical campaign, making a big impact on the cost per customer acquisition. More specifically, while each campaign ran across the BlueLithium’s UK publisher network, the best results were achieved when customers first saw a branded banner and were then offered tactical ads for the brochure.
A third campaign which re-targeted those who had seen the branding campaign with tactical ads for brochures lowered the average cost-per-brochure-requested 50 percent less than the tactical campaign alone.
“The beauty of doing behavioral targeting on the Web,” Mr. Sullivan said, “is that it’s easy to recognize when a consumer is exhibiting buyer behavior and offer them the most appropriate and helpful ad based on their actions and intent.”
He said that car shoppers have an eight to 10 week buying cycle that involves search, car database research and branded Web site visits before purchase decisions are made.
Retargeting is an online advertising technique that uses cookies to identify people who’ve visited a website, then delivers customized ads designed to drive them back to purchase or upsell as they surf the Web.
The British division of the General Motors manages the Vauxhall, Saab, Chevrolet and Cadillac brands.
Mr. Sullivan said that while behavioral targeting was traditionally a direct marketing tactic, increasingly brand manufacturers were implementing it to increase their share of voice on the Web.
“Behavior targeting which has only been around for 5 years is really just getting started,” Mr. Sullivan said. “BlueLithium is currently exploring several different solutions for advertisers that use targeting technology.”
