Russsell Fradin has a good article on Online Media Daily, Making the Case for Brand Building through Hyper-Targeting, championing targeted messages and compelling creative in online banner advertising.

According to Fradin, hyper-targeting is best when advertisers explicitly place ads on sites that have real contextual relevance as a result of “subject matter experts” — either authoritative editors or self-organized user communities. According to recent data from comScore, the audiences attracted to such sites find the information on them as trustworthy as on larger sites and that they pay attention to advertising there as much or more than on larger sites.

In essence, when you communicate with greater relevance and more focus — surprise, surprise — you are more effective at reaching and engaging your audience.

But Fradin points out that it’s not enough to merely target ad placements. The ad creatives needs to reflect this targeting and project a great brand experience:

Once the hyper-targeted sites are identified, marketers face the dilemma of how to deliver compelling creative for an immersive brand experience. The most effective creative on these sites delivers entertainment and information value to the site publisher and their audience. As a brand, you want to touch your audience multiple times and in varied ways so that your value can be experienced.

But hyper-targeted ads with great creative make an implied promise: when respondents click on your ads, they expect — consciously or subconsciously — your landing experiences to have continuity. This continuity must exist for both the targeted focus of the messaging (“message match”) as well as the creative visual experience.

This is especially important in brand advertising. If a compelling and targeted ad doesn’t have a compelling and targeted landing page, you risk not only failing to build your brand — but may actually damage it by breaking expectations at that critical first impression.

Brand marketers are recognizing the impact of delivering their most compelling creative to hyper-targeted audiences. The results are increased brand awareness, brand affinity and purchase intent. Vertical ad networks make it seamless and scalable to source hyper-targeted inventory, deliver compelling creative, and measure the impact.

Hyper-targeted ads + hyper-targeted landing pages = better branding results.