Targeted summary

In the past ten years, computers, the internet and smartphones have created a digital revolution that has transformed our global economy. We now have the power to search for anything we want, anytime and anywhere.

This immediacy has created a new pressure on business to provide products to the right person at the right time – for the right price.

In one word: Targeting.

If a company is going to be successful in the digital economy, it must learn how to target.

This is because the variety of products on the market has exploded. Modern consumers have a clear idea of what they want, and won’t accept a product that is nearly right. But even if a company has created the perfect product for the consumer’s needs, it must also make that product easy to find, or else no one will buy it.

This is done via SEM or Search Engine Marketing. SEM means making the website that promotes a product as easy to find as possible so that the product is sold and consumers fulfill their needs.

This is done in two ways. First there is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, in which strategic web design optimizes the chance of placing a site high in the search rankings. Then there’s paid search, which we’ll look at in the next blink.

This new world of SEM has opened up a whole new market for advertisers. By combining information collected from search histories and cookies, advertisers can provide ads that pinpoint what consumers want to buy. And if they can acquire space on a high-traffic website like Google – either a high search ranking or a paid search ad – advertisers can offer millions of people exactly what they want.