Taking The Biscuit?
Every time a new visitor comes to that website, a cookie is dropped by the website’s server on the internet browser level. Display advertising platforms use these cookies to keep track of what display ads your browser has been exposed to. This helps advertisers deliver ads that are relevant to your browsing habits. When used for retargeting campaigns, cookies can also allow advertisers to track which users visited their site and then serve these prospects display ads on other sites they visit later. At MRP however, don’t call it cookie targeting. Cookie is a technical term. In the context of B2B, the use case for cookie targeting is persona-based targeting.
Deploying persona-based targeting provides you with an opportunity to focus and tailor your messaging to an individual. The more frequently an account is seeing and interacting with your content, the more likely they’re moving down the funnel – they’re looking for more information, which means they’re either in the consideration or decision-making phase. You can then tailor your messaging to remain relevant with that individuals buying stage.
And it doesn’t stop there. When using cookies, you can use your own cookies through a retargeting pixel or leverage 3rd party cookies to narrow down to a persona based on various demographic, firmographic, and affinity level targeting. One important thing to remember when targeting cookies, you never actually know the actual person you are targeting, just what can be inferred from those cookies.
When Browser Cookies Go Bad
A lot of marketers base their display campaigns on cookies alone, but we’ve come a long way in data collection. This is no longer the best way to craft your campaign. In fact, cookies have quite a few limitations. Using cookies rules out an entire population of prospects who might have not yet visited your website. It also doesn’t allow you to target the entirety of an account that you want to target since cookies are limited to the individual. This limits you from targeting entire buying groups and influencers.
Targeting accounts by IP is the more sophisticated, ABM version of display targeting. Each company has its own IP address, which provides you the ability to target entire accounts with your message instead of just the one person that visited your website. This way, you can use your display platform to target your ads to people who are decidedly in the market for your product or service, who have a high propensity to buy, or who “look like” your current best accounts. As a result, you can market to a smaller, but more highly-curated, list of prospects for a better conversion rate. This saves you money and improves your conversion rates.
Still asking yourself if you should select IP or cookie targeting. The right question is why you should be using both. Look out part 3 of our Account-Based Advertising Technology Series: Using Predictive and Programmatic Together.
