Tag archives: behavioural targeting

The buzz: behavioural targeting

In Italy we have a proverb that says “a vest doesn’t make a monk”. I don’t know if this make sense in English, but I thought it was a good start for a post about behavioural targeting, which is the hot issue of the year. In 2003 the buzz was about contextual advertising, now the discussion is going a step further, analysing not only where the ad is served, but also to whom. There is an increasing demand for personalised services, and the advertising industry needs to adapt to this trend. As Azhar Rafee points out on New Media Age, the concept of behavioural targeting isn’t brand new, but it’s dramatically improved by the Internet:

“Both print and broadcast media have relied on behavioural techniques. But there’s one key difference when we talk about behavioural targeting on the Web: it’s the truest form of targeting because it’s based on real behaviour, not a survey of what consumers say they do.”

Also Ad Age analyses the potentials of behavioural advertising(of course they say “behavioral presenting the case of American Airlines and the Wall Street Journal. The whole sounds rather complicated, but Kris Oser explains it pretty well. Basically, the WSJ track visitors and what they read, combining these data with the information in the users’ database. The “The database-targeting system invisibly creates a virtual audience of a different composition, or a different demographic, than the Web publication’s larger, overall audience. Once they are identified, these segmented audience members can be “followed” around the site and served American Airlines ads, no matter what section of WSJ.com they are reading.”

File under: behavioural targeting

Less calories, more brand

AdAge reports about a successful online initiative by Snapple that used behavioural targeting to increase the awareness of its brand. According to the results provided by Dynamic Logic, the campaign was a success, delivering brand awareness of 76%; brand favorability of 36%; and purchase intent of 37%. The ads run on iVillage targeting a specific audience of “calorie-conscious” women.

File under: behavioural targeting, snapple