The Social Decision Maker

R2integrated CEO Matt Goddard recently joined other digital marketing thought leaders from Google, AOL, Yahoo!, and NBC Universal (among others) to discuss how brands find their customers in a data driven world as top industry experts and insiders dive deeply into the challenges and success stories of audience targeting, management, and monetization.

While most thought leadership focused primarily on buying target audiences through data acquisition, Goddard highlighted the fact that most product information is already known and readily available to potential consumers, and decision making behavior has shifted to online communities of interest where socially exchanged information determines what we will eventually buy.

Below are excerpts from his presentation at DIGIDAY: TARGET –

Brands continue to become more aware of their audience by targeting them in places the customer is familiar with and visits on a consistent basis.  It is from there that the consumer makes a decision about whether or not to buy a specific brand or product by researching through a community of interest.

Simply put, people make buying decisions using communities of interest, which are places people go to make better decisions!  Brands must identify the communities of interest that are important, rate them, score them and then actively engage with them.

Goddard’s complete presentation can be found here: