2006: The Year of Behavioral Marketing
by Jean-Philippe Maheu, Friday, December 16, 2005
ONLINE BEHAVIORAL MARKETING IS AN increasingly important, fast-evolving arena that can serve consumers' best interests, and 2006 is shaping up to be a watershed year for the industry. Behavioral marketing delivers positive,measurable results for publishers (higher eCPMs on their run-of-network inventory), advertisers (larger reach of their target audience) as well as many benefits to consumers (free content, free applications, and more relevant ads).
While companies like Tacoda, Revenue Science, Claria, and Direct Revenue have been focused on this market for some time, the large established online media companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have recently announced plans (and for some, preliminary results from early tests) to incorporate behavioral targeting into their advertising offerings. Without a doubt, behavioral marketing is here to stay.
But wait a minute... How do companies do the targeting?
Regardless of the methods (tracking cookies or downloadable applications), behavioral marketing requires some knowledge of users' computer and Web usage.