By Mark Hanzlik, Executive Director

A piece in AdWeek yesterday posed an awfully loaded question for digital advertisers, one which has puzzled ad buyers for some time.   Is Targeting Killing Content Advertising? According to AdWeek, apparently the answer is no.

The questions were posed at a panel gathering for Business Insider’s Ignition conference earlier this week.   The consensus of the panelists pointed toward co-existence between targeted advertising and content advertising.   They point out that targeting technologies for the most part ignore content, thereby only partially providing ad buying strategies that blend both of these important marketing ingredients.

For those of us on the publishing side, the challenge remains noteworthy.   Potential digital advertisers and agencies must be informed and armed with this kind of thinking before they stake a claim in either direction (content-driven ad buying or targeting-only).    There is a need for a better buying model online that hasn’t quite arrived yet in my opinion.