We’re in an age in which we continue to see a shift in the advertising/marketing budgets of many companies. We’re witnessing dollars shift from your traditional mediums such as television ad radio land in the hands of Online Marketing budgets. Online display and search spending is projected to grow at an annual rate of ten percent over the next five years. To dive even deeper, more and more companies are interested in new tactics and methods to acquire new customers. Being in the online marketing space myself, more specifically that of online lead generation and customer acquisition, I’m finding how much an individual is really worth in the eyes of an advertiser and let me tell you…it’s not that much.

I recently attended Ad:Tech in San Francisco. For those of you that have not heard of Ad:Tech, its a convention that takes place numerous times over the course of every year for about the last ten years. Attending an Ad:Tech, you’ll see brand advertisers, agencies, portals, online publishers and technology providers all exchanging ideas, experiences, new innovative solutions etc.

While walking the exhibition floor of the Moscone Center I kept my eye out for companies that execute performance based marketing initiatives for their clients. This ranges from campaigns executed via search, email, banner, lead generation, mobile and more. All of which have some sort of performance metric tied to it, whether its CPA (cost per acquisition), CPC (cost per click), CPM (cost per thousand impressions), CPL (cost per lead), all of these methods allow companies to provide some metric for which success should be measured.

As I’ve entered this industry I’ve noticed more and more companies across the internet aiming to capture valuable information from web users. Many rarely notice or mind that their providing this information to sites they visit or advertisements they see online but it carries value to many…especially the advertiser. Think about the sites you visit on a daily basis or those that receive a significant amount of traffic. Take Career Builder for example. Many visit this site everyday looking for jobs, posting their resumes. Do you notice they offer up advertisements in which they deliver your information to companies and sometimes even Universities for a small price?

// A full page University of Phoenix offer.

Well, many advertises like UOP do this all across the web. So as you start receiving emails, phone calls or text messages which may appear to be “spam” in your mind, think about what offers you may have opted into. More and more you’ll notice companies are aiming to find a way to connect with you. Again, being in this industry I am a little more aware now, however, sometimes I come across things that just leave me chuckling.

While at the convention, I figured I’d take a break and check some email seeing as how I was out of the office and didn’t want to fall behind. Well, the convention center offered up free wireless…or should I say “Free”. Prior to garnering access to the web I was presented with this:

//Landing page for all visitors aiming to access the internet at the convention.

Many at the convention probably laughed like me but I just found it amusing that I had to provide an email address to access the internet. Seeing as how many probably provided a fake email to avoid “spam” from this investment banker. Seeing as how they were a sponsor of the convention this was probably included in their sponsorship fee but you’ll notice they do obtain that information as their own once provided.

This just made me think of ones worth on the web. Advertisers pay for information like First Name, Last Name and Email everyday. Depending on the advertiser you’ll see different evaluations of ones worth. Usually, for that type of information, not that much. A few bucks at most. Now, I’m not against this type of advertising in anyway as when it’s done right it is effective and un-intrusive. Yet some tend to abuse the ability to capture and market to potential customers. I provide my information often pending on the advertisement and how relevant it is to me and my lifestyle. Most of us would like to think we’re worth more than a few bucks but when it comes to the web and the rate at which an individual will convert to an action or sale…it’s relatively low!

Do you opt-in to many offers on the web? Are you hesitant to give your information for advertisers to contact you? Coming soon I’ll elaborate on the performance marketing arena as I see it thus far. Stay tuned.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 20th, 2008 at 11:36 am and is filed under Online, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.