Dive Brief:
- A report from Information Resources, Inc. shows that while many advertisers are worried about being ripped off by non-human traffic and non-viewable ads, they may actually be making more mistakes by advertising to non-interested humans.
- According to IRI, advertisers are often wasting over half of their budgets advertising to users who have never bought and have never shown interest in their product. IRI principal Chen Wang explains it isn't so much "Coke trying to lure loyal Pespi drinkers," but more like dog food companies advertising to non-dog-owners.
- The biggest problem, Wang says, is that online advertising is supposed to be highly targeted, but 51% of the 12 campaigns studied had an audience where 51% had never made a purchase in the product category.
Dive Insight:
As a whole, the industry is still working out a lot of the bugs in online advertising and targeting. This report brings to light a big problem facing advertisers. Twelve campaigns isn't quite representative of the industry as a whole, but advertisers should be more aware of who exactly they're targeting.
