Good News for Advocates of Behavioral Targeting

According to Jupiter Research (Effective Targeting, Vision Report, June 7, 2006), advertisers for products with long purchase cycles, such as automobiles, are using behavioral targeting with great success. Those advertisers who added behavioral targeting to their campaign mix claimed to be 17 percent more satisfied with their digital marketing programs than traditional marketers.

Definitions of Behavioral Targeting in report include:

Extended content targeting - advertiser is targeting someone who has looked at a particular type of content as defined by both the advertisers and the publisher. Then they target an ad to that person when they have moved to different content.

Purchase intent targeting - advertiser is looking for someone engaged in the buying cycle as demonstrated by researching a product or talking about buying.

If you would like more information on Behavioral Targeting, please view One Answer to Problem of Behavioral Targeting, a post on CoolAdzine for Marketers.


Tags: Behavorial Targeting, Jupiter Research, extended content targeting, purchase intent targeting, behavioral segments

Behavioral Targeting and AOL Keywords?

To capitalize on the fast-growing online ad market, AOL, Yahoo, Google and others have resorted to purchasing online ad services companies.

• Google is in the process of buying DoubleClick
  
• Yahoo recently closed its acquisition of Right Media
• In May, Microsoft announced intentions to buy digital marketing aQuantive Inc.
• AOL acquired Third Screen Media and AdTech AG this year, and Lightningcast last year.

AOL purchased Tacoda for $275 Million. TACODA® Audience Networks™ was the first and largest behavioral targeting advertising network, and reaches more than 120 million people across 31 discrete audience segments every month.

Read the article: Advertising Age - Digital - AOL Acquires Behavioral-Targeting Shop Tacoda

From the article:

Targeted display advertising is expected to be a growing business. One reason: Behavioral-targeting technology is helpful for monetizing sites that aren't naturally commercial or contextual. For example, if a person is surfing an auto website and then moves to a national news site, a behavioral-targeting firm can detect that surfing history and serve up an auto ad on the news site, knowing this person is interested in cars.

Interested? Read more on BT here: articles on BT on Advertising for Success Blog.

Tags: Behavorial Targeting, Tacoda, AOL, extended content targeting, purchase intent targeting, behavioral segments

FTC and Behavioral Targeting

Comments on the Federal Trade Commission's proposed behavioral targeting and privacy guidelines were due Friday.

The Center for Digital Democracy filed a document with the FTC asking for a ban on behavioral targeting to children under 13 and an opt-in system for targeting people with certain medical conditions or who are in financial distress.

Just An Online Minute » Blog Archive » Just An Online Minute… Proposed BT Guidelines: From ‘Don’t Touch Us’ To ‘More Regs, Please!’

A consortium of marketing organizations--including the American Advertising Federation, American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers, Interactive Advertising Bureau, Magazine Publishers of America and U.S. Chamber of Commerce--filed a brief with the Federal Trade Commission, asking FTC to stop proposing guidelines without proof that consumers are harmed by behavioral targeting.

Tags: behavioral targeting, ftc, privacy

Behavioral Targeting and Search Engine Marketing Hybrid

Danielle Leitch of MoreVisibility, a search engine marketing firm, speaks with authority about click-through rate and behavioral targeting (BT):

On MSN and Google, and to some extent, Yahoo, your click-through rate ... determine your positioning ... the more qualified the searcher to the ad, the higher the likelihood they will click...

Read the complete interview in Behavioral Insider.

According to Ms. Leitch, all benefits from behavioral targeting will flow to the advertiser. However, consumers will have faster access to more relevant information...finally!

Increased efficiency in the search process will bring increased services to consumers. Like what? Read about virtual travel planning and tourism services on USAer Blog.

Tags: search engine marketing, behavioral targeting, internet, MSN, MoreVisibility,

Behavioral Targeting by any other name . . .

New Google Advertising: Breach of Privacy?

This is scary. Google is adding interest-based advertising, going a step beyond the targeted advertising they now offer to Adsense advertisers. Google will track actions across the Internet in order to serve interest-based advertisements to users.

Although it sounds good in theory, this is behavioral targeting. Google has indicated that there will be an opt-out option, IF you know to ask for it. For a majority of users, their actions will be cataloged, their market segment determined, their demographics noted, and their privacy violated.

For related posts about behavioral targeting, click here.

Tags: adsense, google, interest-based advertising, behavioral targeting, privacy

Behavioral Targeting : Changes in Attitudes

MediaPost Publications - The Three Ws - 04/18/2007

As standalone entities, each of the key emerging targeting methodologies, demographic (which tells you WHO consumers are), behavioral (which tells you WHAT they like) and contextual (which tells you WHERE they are) each have signal strengths and weaknesses.

This is a great article in which Phil Leggiere, (Behaviorial Insider, Wednesday, Apr 18, 2007) asks questions of Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Specific Media, about behavioral targeting.

In the new paradigm there are still three steps, but they're very different. Now it goes more like this. You (the advertiser) tell us what customers you're trying to reach. Then we identify them -- and finally, we report on the content.

Tags: behavioral targeting, Mediapost, Behavioral Insider, Specific Media

Wisdom of Invisible Crowds and BT

MediaPost Publications - Targeting Relationships - 07/25/2007

We try to pay close attention to the way people interact with the pages they visit. We look at how quickly or slowly they scroll across particular pages, what terms they highlight or right click to get more information about a given item, their link density. Other areas like click path and time spent that elucidate engagement are also increasingly important to us. (read complete article).

This is an interesting article about behavioral targeting and provides some insight into what BT can do for your website. Phil Leggierre (Behavioral Insider, MediaPost publications) interviews Mike Svatek, marketing director and product manager of Baynote, a firm that provides content guidance with

the Wisdom of Invisible Crowds™--the implicit, emergent behaviors of website visitors who are anonymous and unknown to each other-- to guide like-minded website visitors to the most useful content and information.

Tags: BT, behavioral targeting, content guidance, Behavioral Insider, Baynote

What is the Bird Doing?

As behavioral targeting grows, so do the challenges offered by flash-based apps, shared videos, and downloaded widgets.

This interview is Quantcast CEO Konrad Feldman being interviewed by Phil Leggiere from Behavioral Insider » Blog Archive » Widgets And BT: Charting Changes In Online Behavior - read entire article

From the article:

The widget and video measurement focuses on usage of all Flash-based applications whether they occur on a publisher’s Web site or are distributed from that site elsewhere. In order to really understand the new environment of video and widget consumption you need to understand the dynamics of distribution, how and where videos and widgets are sent, forwarded or linked. You also need to understand frequency or how often a visitor is exposed to a given media element over a period of time.

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This article reminded me of this quote by Richard Feynman:

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

Tags: behavioral targeting, widgets, flash-based apps, shared videos

Search Engines and Your Privacy

If you have ever wondered what the search engines do with the information they gather on their users, you will find some of the answers in the CNET News.com article below.

In their own words: Search engines on privacy | CNET News.com

To help our readers evaluate the privacy differences between AOL, Ask.com, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, CNET News.com sent them a survey on August 6. We've published their answers--in the companies' own words . . . (read this article)

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My thoughts:

Notable is Ask.com, who plans to introduce AskEraser at the end of the year to totally wipe out your virtual footprints. Otherwise, you must logout and clear cookies if you do not want to leave tracks that may be stored for up to 18 months. Some search engines use behavioral targeting, some without allowing you to opt out.

As a marketer, I am excited by behavioral targeting from both an advertiser's and a searcher's viewpoint. The more information the searcher discloses, the more personalized a search result will be.

As a private citizen, I set my browser to empty cookies whenever it closes. If I am logged in, I try to remember to logout of Yahoo or Google before searching. I will use AskEraser when it is available.

Your Thoughts:

The information search engines retain may include user's search request, IP address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of the user's request, and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify a user's browser. If you are logged into your account with a search engine when you conduct a search, more information is saved.

What is your opinion about the retention of privacy information by search engines? Will you do anything differently when you search? Do you believe the search engines were totally honest with their answers?

Tags: search engines, retention of data, privacy issues

Do Not Track Initiative

As reported on CoolAdzine for Marketers last week, Facebook is unleashing an advertising model that will allow advertisers to serve behaviorally targeted advertising to members of social networks based upon their profile information and contacts.

Click to read: Social Network Ads: Too Close, Too Personal?

From the article:

Analysts and agency executives say the moves to uncover what a News Corp. executive once called the "digital gold" of user-interest data and social connections could herald the evolution of behavioral targeting as the greatest advance in Internet advertising since Google perfected keyword-targeted search ads seven years ago.

Some privacy groups have responded by creating a Do Not Track initiative. I responded by uninstalling all applications and making my profile private on Facebook. How will you respond?

Tags: privacy, behavioral targeting, social networks, facebook, do not track

Fox Making Money on My Space?

Fox Interactive Media (FIM) is made up of a number of websites, including MySpace, AmericanIdol.com, PhotoBucket and FOXSports.com. Fox Interactive Media generated revenues of $856 million in fiscal 2008, missing the 1 billion target goal set by parent company, News Corp. News Corp. does not publicly disclose how much of FIM's revenues come from MySpace, but insiders estimate about 80 percent. Caclulations find MySpace earning $685 million in revenues for the fiscal year.

Monetizing MySpace Traffic - eMarketer

From eMarketer analysis:

. . . an eMarketer analysis of FIM US revenues versus unique visitors shows that FIM is getting better at monetizing its traffic. eMarketer estimates that the US accounts for 80% of total FIM revenues. That puts US revenues at FIM at $180 million in the June quarter, up 23% from $146 million in the same quarter in 2007. By contrast, the average number of monthly unique visitors in the US grew just 6.6% in the same time period, according to eMarketer's analysis of comScore Media Metrix data.

In Q2 2007, FIM earned roughly $0.59 in average monthly revenue per US unique visitor. In Q2 2008, average monthly revenue per US unique visitor was $0.68, or an increase of 15 percent. Monetization has fallen off since late 2007, when average monthly revenue per unique visitor reached $0.75.

Monetization is accomplished with behavioral targeting, called HyperTargeting initiative. Display ads are targeted based on information users divulge in their profiles. One-half of all ad buys now include HyperTargeting. For the last two quarters CPMs for HyperTargeting campaigns have been more than double those for nontargeted advertising,.

Person June quarter

Right click for SmartMenu shortcuts

Tags: monetizing myspace, hypertargeting, behavioral targeting, increased revenue

Behavioral Targeting and Email Marketing

MediaPost Publications - Toward Consumer-Driven BT - 04/25/2007

. . . intellectual capital on the part of the client, a vision of where they want their marketing to go, and a clear sense of what they want from a campaign. The norm, unfortunately, is that people start with loads of data and then try to derive a strategy from it. ...We're looking to get clients... to reverse that order.

If you use email marketing, you should read this. This is a great interview with Arthur Sweetser, vice president of marketing at e-mail optimization firm e-Dialog.

Tags: behavioral targeting, email marketing, marketing plan

Opt-In, Opt-Out of Behavioral Marketing

Behavioral Marketing Targeted by ATT&T

The AT&T-backed think tank Future of Privacy Forum launched a campaign warning consumers how search engines store their queries and marketers use online cookies. AT&T favors an opt-in model for behavioral advertising, which serves advertisements to people based on their Web-surfing activity.

MediaPost Publications - Delete Cookies, Says New Privacy Forum - 12/01/2008

The group goes on to instruct people about options to enhance privacy. The advice includes directives to delete cookies and use Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 browser -- which includes a feature that can block the cookies that track users across sites for ad-serving purposes. The organization also suggests that searchers use IAC's Ask Eraser, which deletes some log files tying search queries to IP addresses.

To Protect Yourself

I have set up my browser to delete all cookies and privacy information when my browser closes.


Some adware programs automatically opens Internet Explorer, so make sure you clear your information out of IE if you use it at all.

Software Helpers

Make sure your computer is secured with a firewall, and protection against viruses, spybots and malware. Make sure you set the programs to automatically update or you should manually update them 2-3x a week.

I use ZoneAlarm, Spybot Search & Destroy, Ad-Aware, and Norton Anti-Virus. These are direct links and the download are free of any type of trojans or tracking cookies.

Tags: at&t, think tank, future of privacy forum, behavioral targeting, opt-in behavioral marketing

Neuro-Marketing Made Easy

Well, we knew it was coming. Behavioral targeting and re-targeting, emotional marketing, subliminal advertising ... could direct connect to the brain by branding be far away?



Here are just a few of the recent articles that may be of interest to the savvy marketer.

• Activity in Posterior Parietal Cortex Is Correlated with the Relative Subjective Desirability of Action
• A Truffle in the Mouth Is Worth Two in the Bush: Odor Localization in the Human Brain
• Cycling the Synapse: Scenic versus Direct Routes for Vesicles
• Neural Correlates of Behavioral Preference for Culturally Familiar Drinks
• Predictive Neural Coding of Reward Preference Involves Dissociable Responses in Human Ventral Midbrain and Ventral Striatum
• Cortical Development deNUDEd

You may find the summaries of the research above at Neuron.org.



The next newsworthy event probably be focus groups that remind us of the Matrix.

Or, perhaps the desensitivation of medical researchers of higher brain processes from Baylor Medical.






They will will need help before they try to discuss research with the young guns of the advertising world.







Tags: neuromarketing, brain branding, young guns, worth the pain

AlmondNet BT purchase-intent data

National Ad Force to Distribute AlmondNet Behavioral Ads - MarketingVOX - click to read entire article

AlmondNet just announced a strategic Partnership with National AdForce, an interactive online advertising sales company. The partnership will allow the re-sale of AlmondNet’s BT purchase-intent data. (Can we say Gold Mine?)

From the article:

AlmondNet utilizes a process called "Post-Search behavioral targeting" to drive targeted display advertising to US and UK users across 40 demographic segments. Each user hosts a cookie that divulges recently-demonstrated purchase-intent to the ad firm.

Beth Schechner from TrylonSMR

Tags: BT, purchase intent data, almondnet, national adforce

Boycotting a Certain Search Engine

I am boycotting this search engine, which means I have decided to quit using their services in protest of their corporate practices.

To begin the purge of this search engine from my life, I have:

• Removed it as an option for search in my FireFox browser,
• Removed any of their existing advertisements on my blogs and websites,
• Removed their analytics from my blogs and websites.

I still need to:

• Remove my sitemaps from their site.
• Transfer blogs from Blogger to their own domain.
• Stop using their webmail.

I know there will be more because this search engine has insidiously crept into every part of my life.

Why Boycott?

I disagree with what this search engine did with their latest version of their Page Rank algorithm. This update appeared to penalize bloggers for being members of advertising networks, monetizing their blogs with text links, and being "do follow" blogs.

Somehow, the algorithm appeared to unfairly target the rankings of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firms, whose principals make their living from optimizing web pages, writing articles about SEO, and through their websites and blogs.

All over the blogosphere, page ranks are dropping. It is like being left out of the yellow pages or having the telephone company change your business phone number without telling you. Why? This search engine decided it did not want to

Page Rank

Back in the 1990s, Apostolos Gerasoulis, a mathematician, developed the algorithm that powers Ask.com, based upon the work of John Kleinberg, an American mathematician. The Ask.com algorithm is a mathematically precise approach of counting only those links stemming from pages concerning the topic of the search request. Which means the processing is dependent on the search phrase and has to be determined anew for each search query.

On the other hand, the algorithm that powers the boycotted search engine is based on the premise that counting the number of links referring to a document determines the importance of the document. Therefore, the degree of networking is determined independently from the current search request.

The founders of the boycotted search engine developed and patented the algorithm for Page Rank. Since then, they have used their position foist many other practices on webmasters and marketers, such as these listed below.

• Claiming your blogs and websites,
• Submitting a site map so the search bots know which pages to index,
• Having only certain links pointing to your site, and
  
• Making every link a "no follow" link.

They also offered free tools for us to use, which seem like a good idea at the time, but just allowed the search engine more access:

• Free web analytics to track your traffic.
• Free web mail, which appears to use behavioral targeting to serve advertisements based on the content of your emails.
• Mapping and other applications to help you put more information within their reach.
• Blog templates with "no follow" and "no index" metatags in the header and "no follow" tags on every link and comment.

In my mind, the boycotted search engine has stepped over the line of ethical behavior by attempting to dictate what I may or may not do on my blogs and websites. I have allowed this to happen. For me, this stops now.

Tags: boycott search engine, boycott page rank, take back our blogs