Eloqua Adds Display Ad Capabilities to Platform

Eloqua, a provider of marketing automation solutions, unveiled today a new channel, Eloqua AdFocus, to enable marketers to manage targeted and personalized display ads from its Campaign Canvas tool, adding paid media capabilities to its platform.

Forrester Research predicts online display advertising spend in the U.S. will reach $12.7 billion by the end of this year and will grow by 17 percent annually, to $28 billion by 2017. Given that targeting and personalization strategies have become an important component of advertising, AdFocus lets marketers create ad copy and segment it for specific companies or visitors as well as align it to whichever buying stage visitors are in when they go to a company's Web site.

To do so, Eloqua has partnered up with targeting specialists Demandbase and Bizo. Demandbase helps users move through the steps of setting up and managing target display ads for individual accounts, and Bizo lets them target individual leads or prospects.

Eloqua already helps its customers incorporate earned media (social media comments, shares, and likes) and owned media (Web sites, emails, blog posts) into their marketing campaigns, so being able to add a paid component through display ads will be a "no brainer" for its customers, maintains Rob Bois, product marketing manager at Eloqua.

"Some companies are still using display ads only at the brand advertising level, but we're seeing more B2B marketers use it to provide specific offers that bring leads through the pipeline," Bois says. "AdFocus also takes the guesswork out of figuring out where to place your ad and making sure it appears in front of the right customer, so there's going to be a lot of interest [in this tool]."

AdFocus only handles Web-based campaign ads but mobile ads are on the company's radar, according to Bois. So far, only a handful of companies have tested AdFocus, such as electronic signature provider DocuSign and Vistage, a firm that specializes in executive coaching. AdFocus will be available to customers starting in January.

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