I’ve decided to retire massless communication, at least for now. Check out my new site at www.eleanorbaird.com.
If you’re interested in the final thesis, you can find it at http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/44213.
Thanks for reading,
Eleanor
Moving on…to eleanorbaird.com
17 05 2009Comments : Leave a Comment »
Categories : Uncategorized
The ToC
25 04 2008Finally, here it is! There may be some tweaking, but this is essentially how the document will be laid out. Only a few more days to go!
Introduction
- Why this, why now?
- Research Questions
- Methodology
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Categories : planning, thesis
New abstract!
15 03 2008I’ve sent this out to a few people now – this is my revised abstract, which I put together this week. The structure of the paper has changed a bit too, and I’ll post more on that in the next few days. I’d welcome any comments you have!
In recent years, audience fragmentation has forced the advertising community to revise its thinking about delivering messages through mass communication channels. Changes in web technology and consumer behavior has, in many cases, increased opportunities to target advertising, yet how to make the most effective use of them has proven to be more elusive. The purpose of this thesis will be to understand the implications of this shift for consumers and industry; identify meaningful metrics; search for innovative practices in the field; and investigate potential role of social networks, branded utilities, cross-platform targeting optimization, learning styles, and semantic web in the next generation of targeted advertising.
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Tags: abstract, online advertising, thesis
Categories : planning, thesis
Mobile Marketing: More ads on the go? (Part I)
14 03 2008This is a cross-post from the Convergence Culture Consortium blog, at http://www.convergenceculture.org/weblog/2008/03/mobile_marketing_more_ads_on_t.php
A few days ago, Nielsen released a report where they estimated that 58 million Americans had seen advertising on their phones in the last month. That is a lot of people, but it represents 23%, less than a quarter, of subscribers in the U.S.
And that number might be a little high. According to Nielsen’s site, the findings were based on a survey of 22,000 people who were “active mobile data users who used at least one non-voice mobile service in the fourth quarter”, suggesting that the respondents may be more open to or better able to receive advertising and content in more formats than the average subscriber.
Clearly, there is growing interest in mobile as an advertising channel, but the study found that just 10% of respondents thought that “advertising on their mobile device was acceptable”. As I work on my thesis, I’ve been thinking more and more about mobile phones as a delivery channel for targeted advertising. Although I’m very new to this area, the Nielsen study did make me think about why we aren’t seeing more advertising on our phones and PDAs, why consumers are so opposed to the practice, and if there is a trade-off that’s preferable to the ad-supported content model.
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Tags: mobile advertising, targeting
Categories : advertising
Convergence Culture and Behavioral Targeting
17 02 2008Note: This entry is a cross post from the Convergence Culture Consortium blog.
On Monday, Online Media Daily reported that Revenue Science, a behavioral targeting (BT) marketing firm, called for participants in an initiative it is calling the Behavioral Targeting Standards Consortium (BTSC), a group of industry practitioners and thought leaders that would define BT, set standards for data collection and use, define best practices, and identify some common metrics.
What does that have to do with convergence culture? I would argue quite a lot.
I am writing my thesis at MIT Sloan on targeted online advertising, so I have spent the last several months delving into the technology, techniques, issues and potential of the practice of BT. I am an MBA student, so my focus has been on the business and regulatory implications, but I would argue that, particularly as BT gets more sophisticated and the technology we use enables it to reach us through the internet on our computers, mobile phones, and perhaps eventually our televisions and other devices we haven’t imagined yet.
Advertising is ubiquitous in modern life, and has always been a fundamental part of mass media and entertainment industry economics, as has measuring and understanding audiences in order to couple advertising and content in a way that will attract their attention and generate sales. BT, however, enables a whole other level of targeting, based not just on what content is accessed, but on inputs provided by the audience itself on what they are interested in. It moves the currency of the media and advertising symbiosis from masses of eyeballs to smaller groups with specific needs and preferences, altering the message and potentially the medium. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: behavioral targeting, BTSC, consumer, FTC, online advertising, privacy, regulation, thesis
Categories : advertising, definitions, industry and players, thesis
Not Clicking? New data raises questions about future of online ads and metrics
14 02 2008Going through my RSS feed this afternoon, I came upon a post on Ilya Vedrashko’s blog, AdLab, about data from comScore and Starcom that suggests that banner ads fail to generate significant clicks beyond certain demographics and certain types of sites, and that the impact of clicks on brand metrics is negligible.
The questions I’m asking myself right now, and expect to address in the next few weeks, are: Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: metrics, online advertising
Categories : advertising, metrics
Types of Targeting (Part I) – Ready, aim, advertise!
14 02 2008In my last post, I outlined my current plan for my thesis on targeted online advertising. This time, I’d like to answer what might seem like a very basic question, but it is still a very fundamental one: what do I mean by targeted advertising in the context of the web?
Targeting isn’t a new concept at all – marketers and advertisers have been finding ways to segment audiences for decades. What makes targeting in the context of the web so interesting to me is that it offers opportunities for near mass personalization from a variety of different angles and media formats in a very short period of time, and the capability to get real time data on how users respond to those changes. The flip side is the privacy issues that arise from those capabilities, which I will talk about in later posts.
I’ve divided online targeting into four categories: Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: definitions, marketing, online advertising, targeting, thesis
Categories : definitions, thesis
The thesis
11 02 2008For my inaugural post, I thought I’d explain in a little more depth what my MBA thesis is actually about by providing both a very early abstract and an outline, below. Future posts will be thought pieces based on my research, the purpose being to get some ideas “on paper” as I write for my April 6th full draft deadline, but also to vet some of my ideas before I make them part of the “official” thesis. So, I always appreciate questions, suggestions, and comments of all varieties on what I post on the blog. You can also email me at eleanor@sloan.mit.edu.
General overview
In the last several years, fragmentation of audiences has forced much of the advertising community to revise its thinking about delivering messages through mass communication channels. As new media forms have emerged that enable interactive search, collaborative filtering and social networking among consumers, so have opportunities to target advertising, yet how to make the most effective use of these tools has proven more elusive. The purpose of this thesis is to review past and current practices in targeted advertising, understand consumer motivations and attitudes about privacy and ubiquity of ads, and project future trends and directions for designing and targeting personalized advertising content.
At the moment, I’m working with an outline that divides the document into eight parts:
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Tags: online advertising, outline, planning, thesis
Categories : advertising, planning, thesis
