It’s been a long, long time since I had the time to blog. My poor neglected blog has been the casualty of a very busy fall planning season. However, I’m on a trip, sitting in a hotel, waiting for room service to bring me a bite to eat and have a bit of time to write down some thoughts.
I’ve been working with a lot of account teams and clients over the past several months to take advantage of the millions of digital advertising oppotunties out there. I’ve come across a lot of hype around behavioral targeting and wanted to do my share to educate recruitment advertisers on how this should and should not fit into their strategies.
Behavioral targeting is a type of targeting that uses data collected on web browsing habits and actions that users have taken in the recent past. This type of targeting is available on most ad networks, major sites and portals (Yahoo, MSN, AOL). Most vendors offer “job seeking behavior” as one of the selections. An advertiser’s ads can be shown to users who have done job searches on search engines or visited career sites recently. This obviously has some usefulness for recruitment, but also some issues.
First, what is great about behavioral targeting:
- It can place your ad in front of someone who is much more likely to be looking for a job. This is great IF your goal is to reach active job seekers, such as when you have a huge hiring initiative or just need to get “butts in seats”.
- By placing your ad in front of active job seekers, you’ll likely see higher click-throughs since the users are already people who are in the job hunt
Now, here are the caveats.
- The main issue I see with the use of behavioral targeting for recruitment is that a lot of media plans are meant to reach passive candidates. Any ads that use behavioral targeting to people who have exhibited “job seeking” behavior are, by definition, targeting active job seekers. If that is your goal, great. However, if you are trying to reach candidates that are not looking for a job, behavioral targeting to job seekers is the wrong way to go.
- Another caveat that most vendors don’t address is that when using behavioral targeting, it is important to develop targeted creative. Even though your ad is being served to someone who is looking for a job, your ad still has to stand out as relevant to that behavior. Remember, the job seeker doesn’t know you are targeting them. The creative should really speak to someone who is searching for a job.
Behavioral targeting definitely has its uses, but it has no place in a strategy to reach passive candidates. Many of the vendors selling this service don’t really understand the difference between a passive and active candidate. The passive candidates, the ones who aren’t on search engines looking for jobs or visiting job sites regularly, are often just the candidates we are trying to reach. It doesn’t matter how much higher the click-through rates will be if you are not reaching your target audience.
So definitely explore behavioral targeting, just be careful to use only when it fits your overall strategy.
November 28, 2007 at 11:11 pm
I wonder if one might achieve success by launching TWO behavioral campaigns - one with the creative necessary to reach the job seekers, and another for those who aren’t. Could be an interesting thing to track.
November 28, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Probably not. We can run multiple creative within a single behaviorally targeted (BT) campaign if we want to test creative concepts. An advertiser can run two campaigns, for instance, both targeting Nurses in New York, and layer behavioral targeting on one and compare. However, its not an apples to apples comparison. The BT campaign will have higher click-through in most cases. But the non-BT campaign might reach more nurses that couldn’t be reached via a job board or traditional sourcing tools.
Another issue with BT campaigns is that if the media vendor’s inventory is limited, you can significantly reduce the reach of the campaign and you may end up serving ads over and over to the same people. We sometimes see BT campaigns with lower unique impressions. That might not be bad thing for the campaign, but it is a consideration.
December 12, 2007 at 12:23 am
So BT also presumes that you know what you’re going after before you have the need (pipeline building). The strategy seems to be how to insert yourself into “the mix” as the passive (candidates) go about their daily business. This seems to require that you know where the passive go (based on their behavioral tendencies) and what will insert your brand into their mind (creative).
If I’m not too off-base here… who has done/is doing this well (on both sides of the equation: creative and BT?)
Thanks,
wm
December 12, 2007 at 9:10 am
Hi William,
BT does require you make assumptions. With recruiting, most people just choose the behavior similar to “exhibits job searching behavior”, which by definition is targeting active candidates. The confusion becomes that with BT you cna reach that person when they are not in the process of “job search”, which many people will argue is a passive candidate. But I’d say it’s not, just becasue they are looking at that moment, doesn’t mean they aren’t actively looking.
It is apparent that Careerbuilder and Monster use BT extensively in the online marketing. Most people in this industry exhibit what is defined as “job search behavior” while doing their jobs (job board research, posting jobs, searching resumes, etc). Therefore, most of us see Monster and Careerbuilder ads all the time, regardless of where we go on the web. This is usually BT in action.
However, the best use of BT I’ve seen is in the consumer world. I’m a Pats fan. I recently researched and purchased a Pats T-shirt online. Now, FansEdge.com serves me banners where ever I go online that feature Pats gear in them. So their program knows exactly what I’m looking for and is showing it to me. They aren’t showing just a random banner, their creative is specifically targeted to my behavior. That is where BT proves a high ROI and becomes indispensible. Now, the level of detail makes me suspect that the BT is based on what I have done on their sites as opposed to what I’ve done on the web in general.
But this type of site-behavior targeting would be useful to many employers. You can basically re-target those that have been to your site and performed certain actions (i.e. visited the Diversity or benefits sections, searched for specific types of jobs, etc) and then serve them targeted creative.
April 4, 2008 at 1:21 am
So, for a good recruiter, we have to make effort to know more new ways to recruit and know more about the industries which we are dealing with.