Traffic - Is targeted better or non-targeted better?

I once got into an “argument” or “conflict” with someone on a popular forums. He claimed that it does not matter if traffic is targeted or not, whilst I come from the school of thought that targeted traffic is way better than non-targeted ones. We got into a “conflict” and I wasn’t in good terms with that guy ever again, because he refused to show me his believes and yet still took on some petty arguments.

Well, this blog post is not about this guy and me, but rather, my views on whether targeted traffic is better or not.

Simply put, targeted traffic is traffic that come to your blog because they are interested in what you have to show. For example, google adsense works on targeted advertising. You go to a website and ads are shown to other relavant sites. If I am searching for flowers, I may see ad-sense ads that are about flowers and I click them to go to Site B. Thus Site B receives targeted traffic.

Non-targeted traffic is traffic that comes but without intention to see your site or buy what you have to sell. For example, I am just surfing around Apple’s website with no intention of buying an Apple product.

Well, if your intention is to sell something, I would guess that it is better to receive 100 users who are interested in what you have to sell, rather than 100 users who may or may not be interested in what you have to sell. Yes, you may contend that in these 100 users, some may be persuaded to buy your product, but it in fact is minimal. If I have no intention of buying flowers, no matter how attractive the promotions are, chances is I will not spend.

However if I am buying flowers for my girlfriend, and I see a link to a attractive site with attractive promotions, chances are, I will take out my card to pay for the bouquet.

Does this sound logical to you? I hope I made some sense.

Perhaps this will make you see more sense:

You are an advertising manager and you have some budget to spend, what will you do? In the offline world, will you place an ad to a R21 movie in a school? Assuming that the school allows that is, and that the school has a population that’s majority less than 21 years of age. I would guess not. In fact, I just noticed something today. In one of the buses 96 that serves NUS students, they put up the Citibank Clear Card advertisement inside the bus. This is targeted advertising. Citibank Clear Card targets tertiary students and working adults, and it makes more sense to have tertiary students looking at the ads than primary school kids. It makes economic sense too.

In an online world, where every click can cost your company 20 cents, do you want people who are interested or people who may not be interested? In fact, if your website has great persuasion skills, you may be able to persuade people to part with their money, provided that they are interested in your product int he first place. The percentage of people who will purchase your product decreases for non-target traffic. Does it make sense?

Perhaps we can discuss this?