Behavioral targeting or behavioural targeting is a technique used by online publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns. Behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual's web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select which advertisements to display to that individual. Practitioners believe this helps them deliver their online advertisements to the users who are most likely to be influenced by them. Behavioral marketing can be used on its own or in conjunction with other forms of targeting based on factors like geography, demographics or the surrounding content. Examples of behavioural targeting in advertising targeting systems include: nugg.ad, AdLINK 360, Boomerang, DoubleClick, and WunderLoop
Onsite Behavioral targeting
Behavioural targeting techniques may also be applied to content within a retail or other e-commerce website as a technique for increasing the relevance of product offers and promotions on a visitor by visitor basis. Again, behavioral data can be combined with demographic and past purchase history in order to produce a greater degree of granularity in the targeting. Self-learning onsite behavioral targeting systems will monitor visitor response to site content and learn what is most likely to generate a desired conversion event. The best content for each behavioral trait or pattern is often established using numerous simultaneous multivariate tests. A downside of onsite behavioural targeting is the relatively high level of traffic required before statistical confidence levels can be reached regarding the probability of a particular offer generating a conversion from a user with a set behavioural profile. This can be overcome in some systems through a rules based approach, allowing administrators to set the content and offers shown to those with particular traits. Examples of onsite behavioural targeting systems include: Maxymiser, Netmining and Touch Clarity. Unique for Netmining is that they add a interaction layer on top of there solution so you can get in touch with your webvistor at the right time and with the right interaction.
Concerns
Many online users & advocacy groups are concerned about privacy issues around doing this type of targeting. This is an area that the behavioral targeting industry is trying to minimize through education, advocacy & product constraints to keep all information non-personally identifiable or to use opt-in and permission from end-users (permission marketing).
