Targeted : how technology is revolutionizing advertising and the way companies reach consumers /

Smith, vice president at Hearst Digital Media, offers an overview of digital advertising and its potential. The volume, largely distilled from approximately 400 interviews, is grounded in numerous examples that clarify and elaborate upon the complexities of new digital media. The author explains how Mad Men-style advertising approaches are being adapted to meet the habits of current digital consumers. Search engine marketing, the impact of Google, ad networks, paid-search advertising, real time bidding, and data collection and its effect on privacy make up the primary focus of this volume. The author concludes by examining the ways in which new technologies force the advertising industry to shift its course; his argument concentrates on how recent developments in mobile and smart phones have posed a challenge to classical advertising models. Certainly, he is on trend, denoting how, as users move toward tablets, mobile phones, and other handheld devices, society may have reached a post-PC era. Although the author's knowledge is expansive, this book might work better as supplemental reading on the subject. A better choice for answering reference questions might be Damian Ryan's hefty Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation, 3rd ed. (2014). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --Charles Wankel, St. John's University, New York

Smith, a digital-publishing executive, explains how powerfully enabling technologies work in digital advertising. He highlights brilliant innovators who developed such technologies and created novel business models. Digital advertising refers to computer advertising for businesses to target individual consumers and also to advertising on any networked device (e.g., tablet and mobile phone). Digital advertising has become substantial, with $42.8 billion in revenues in 2013. Although that is 57 percent of the total spent on TV advertising, it is more than was spent on cable or broadcast TV individually. The author explains real-time bidding (RTB) on online exchanges: Transactions on such exchanges represent only a little more than 20 percent of digital display ad sales . . . made in fractions of a second using real-time bidding technologies with the capability to establish value without intuition and subjectivity . . . RTB . . . has a bias toward fairness. The winning bidder is willing to pay the most. Smith has learned that even with the greatest technology and business models, success requires leadership; human factors make the difference.--Whaley, Mary Copyright 2014 Booklist