How much do online marketers know about you

Have you ever had that experience where you have posted something on Facebook, let’s say that you made a post about a wedding, and suddenly your feed is filled with advertisements for weddings. Or maybe you have been holding an online conversation about a specific football team with your mates, and suddenly Google is giving you score updates about that team. It is quite freaky how much about you is available on the internet and how that is used to target specific advertisements at you. But much is known about you? Can it be stopped? And what is the general thinking about this targeting? Here are a few things about online campaigns and marketing that you might not be aware of.

It is anonymous

This is a tougher question to answer than you might think. While theoretically, the answer is that it is anonymous, that is not quite the case. Let’s just say that you were to phone a digital marketing company Sydney and ask them to pull your profile – they would not be able to do that. To the people that work there, you cannot be identified or picked out specifically. Yet all your details, in terms of where you log on in the morning, where you log out at the end of the day, what you drive, who you are friends with, what you shop for online, how old you are or where you like to vacation are all available in a database that is able to anonymously profile users. It is why an advertiser is able to target an audience now rather than a platform. In other words, not long ago the maker of female hygiene products would advertise on female orientated sites and hope that they got their message across. Now the same brand would say that they wanted to reach a female audience between the ages of 15 and 35 who fit a specific income bracket and live in a certain area. The systems will deliver that audience to the brand, regardless of what platform they are browsing.

It is effective

Because advertising is significantly more targeted on digital than anywhere else, the return is generally very good. In other words, if you are thinking of going on vacation you will get adverts from airlines and travel companies. This is an easy conversion to make for the advertiser as they are targeting the right audience. The more traditional model was based on spray and pray – in other words, if you get your advertisement in front of enough eyeballs there will be some who are in the market to book a trip.

It’s in the hand of experts

This is all very complicated stuff involved cookies and tags, data lakes and remarketing. It is not something that any amateur can deal with and it is definitely best left to the experts. They will deliver you a comprehensive marketing strategy, make sure that you are compliant with all privacy laws and legislation while at the same time delivering you the audience that you are looking for.