devand.com - Behavioral Targeting

Behavioral Targeting

Written by Sachin Devand

Thursday, 14 February 2008

Behavioral Targeting

Definition

Behavioral targeting is a form of targeting that ad server and ad networks use for targeting users based on their online behavior. Behavior of an online user is defined as his or her intent for information on the web. If I am browsing the web looking at reviews of a car, checking out the prices of latest cars and how different brands stack up against each other, then my intent is for purchasing a vehicle. Each of these intentions can be targeted and advertisers can run campaigns against them. Each intent, depending on its nature, has an expiry. For example, if I am researching cars on the web then my intent for purchasing one might be around 30 days. After which I am not a ‘hot’ target for auto advertising. On the other hand if I am researching a MP3 player like ipod or zune then that expiry time might be in a few days. Looking for air travel might be even shorter.

An Example

Consider for example you are looking to buy an SUV, you go to edmonds.com and research a couple - BMW X5, Acura MDX etc. Then you go to kbb.com and look up prices of some used luxury SUV. You cannot make up your mind so you decide you will sleep over the idea. Next morning you wake up and go to work and browse news at cnn.com. While you are reading an article your eye catches the attention of a flash ad of a Lincoln SUV running in the 300x250 pixel spot. You find it interesting that they are showing a SUV ad. Later, after lunch, you google a work related term and get to a site that has a discussion forum talking about it. You are reading a discussion thread and you notice that an Acura MDX ad shows up at the side bar on the screen. What do you think? Coincidence? I don’t think so!

Under the covers

Here is what is happens under the covers – behavioral ad networks cut deals with online publishers to let them ‘tag’ users with certain parameters based on the site or sub sections of the site. In return, publishers get a piece of ad revenue, ad spend by the ad networks or a flat CPM (cost per thousand impressions). The way this is achieved is by asking the publishers to put a 1x1 pixel image on their pages which links back to the ad network. This pixel is specific to the website. If the website is large there might be different pixels identifying each sub section of the site.

When the user visits a page from the website, the ad network pixel loads along with the rest of the page. This pixel makes a request to the ad network which at that time drops a cookie on the user browser with the information of the page. As the user navigates through various sections of the site or browse away to a different website in the behavioral network the ad network continues to drop cookies on the user browser. Eventually, enough data gets collected for the ad network to start targeting the user based on what they know about them. This sort of targeting is called behavioral targeting.

Concerns
Like all targeting technologies and methodologies that can do precise or near precise targeting, behavioral targeting comes with the age old controversial question about privacy. If someone can ‘know’ what you are doing and target based on that information, do you think they can take undue advantage of this fact? At the face of it you might think so, but really, in my opinion, this information is still quite opaque for the advertiser to use for anything more than their need for targeting. This is so because even though they can follow a user across the web on different websites to identify them, they cannot associate this information with a real life user. This is so because most of the sites don’t require you to give out your personal information. Consider the example above. Although they know you are looking for SUV because you went to edmunds.com they don’t know who you really are because you never entered that information anywhere. As a result, all they know is that the user X who was on Edmunds.com looking for SUVs is now on this other website. This information is quite harmless in my opinion and make targeting more precise and maybe you might actually buy a SUV! Also there are very strict rule and regulations about what kind of personal identifiable information (PII) you can store and pass along.

Market Leaders

Here are some the top companies that do behavioral targeting:

Tacoda
Revenue Sciences

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