Behavioral Targeting – the myth that online behavior is predictive of future interest
A core preoccupation of online targeting has been to locate the most likely prospects to pursue among the millions of active Web searchers, shoppers and browsers. In this pursuit, marketers have increasingly moved from a focus on the Web page to the person, and ultimately tracking their behavior online.
In theory, online behavioral targeting (BT) opens up a far larger universe of potential inventory than contextual or demographic targeting. Once a consumer is identified as “in market” by their actual online activities, they can be reached anytime, anywhere online.
Studies have documented the superiority of BT in some key performance metrics. A recent study, conducted by JupiterResearch for Revenue Science Inc, (now Audience Science), found that online consumers are consistently more receptive to behaviorally targeted ads than to contextual ads, with behavioral ads outperforming by as much as 22%.
The study also found that consumers who responded most often to behaviorally targeted ads skewed to higher income brackets, spent more money online and shopped online more frequently than those favoring contextual ads.
The “Hidden Weakness” of Behavioral Targeting
For all its strengths, BT remains beset by limitations — some technological and others more intrinsic to its marketing model. One nagging difficulty… BT is notoriously difficult to scale. Large networks have hundreds or thousands of sites that they’re trying to monetize and they really have no idea who their visitors are. The extensive variety of BT methods makes it difficult to buy a standard set of behaviors across multiple networks and third-party solutions.
Another weakness in the current practice of BT is its audience-narrowing nature. Though most BT platforms are sold as “self-learning,” evolving systems, most can only take into account the fact that site visitors are “in market” for a single product or product type.
Pros:
• Indentify “In-Market” Status
• Focus on the Individual User
• Tracks Only One Product
• Stale Data; No Feedback Loop
• Blind to Ability to Buy
Cons:
• Not Scalable
• Reflects Online Behaviors Only
Comments 2
Great post Dave. I agree BT has its place, but it’s limited in coverage and in some cases in its ability to determine what ads/content to serve to an individual.
Posted 16 Mar 2009 at 3:55 pm ¶Ross – thanks for the comment. BT does have a very valuable place in the advertising ecosystem, but only when it is accurate and the behavior is predictive of that individual’s interest and lifestyle.
Some people have messaged me and said that BT scales better than Predictive Targeting, as it is easier to get large coverage, which may be true, but if you dropped a cookie on everyone that went to a travel site, and kept that behavior for 6 months, is that behavior predictive or historical?
Posted 16 Mar 2009 at 5:31 pm ¶Post a Comment