Behavioral Targeting at eMetrics

Behavioral Targeting (BT), as I predicted earlier this year, has become very common term among marketers. Look at any online marketing events and you will see more than one session on Behavioral Targeting. This was also evident at eMetrics in Washington DC, where a full track was devoted to Optimization and Behavioral Targeting and several other speakers, not in this track, also talked included Behavioral Targeting in their presentations.

In my presentation, I gave an overview of behavioral targeting, what it is, why should marketers get involved with it, the difference between On-Site and Network targeting, who the players are in the market for each type of targeting and also talked about the privacy issues surrounding Behavioral Targeting. I gave several examples showing how business can benefit from Behavioral Targeting. I also outlined a process that you need to follow if you decide to engage in Behavioral Targeting. This is one of the main things that I wanted my audience to take away from this presentation. This process is an outcome of conversations with several customers who have engaged in Behavioral Targeting. To make my point, I cited an example of customer who engaged in Behavioral Targeting network. After running BT ads on one of the leading BT networks, they called me complaining that they were not seeing the value in Behavioral Targeting. After few minutes of conversation it became clear to me that they did not have a proper process in place, they did not fully understand how BT worked and what to expect (one of the reasons of why BT did not work is cited in my previous post titled Size of Your Segment and Network Reach Matters in Behavioral Ad Targeting). Result? A lot of effort, time and money was wasted. So, if you are planning on getting involved with Behavioral Targeting make sure you have a proper process in place (I will outline our process in a future post). (Note: If you were, are or planning to use Behavioral Targeting I would like to talk to you, please contact me at batraonline at gmail.com)

At the end, I showed how on-site Behavioral Targeting can be accomplished without using any third party Behavioral Targeting tools. You can use any Web Analytics tool including Google Analytics, persistent cookies and some coding to get Behavioral Targeting going on your site. This is a great way to try on-site Behavioral Targeting before spending money on third party tools.

If you missed the presentation, don’t worry you will have more chances to hear it in near future. In November I will be doing a free Behavioral Targeting seminar in Seattle so if you are in Seattle area I would love to meet with you there. The final date of the seminar will be posted on this blog and also at ZeroDash1 events page. If you would like to schedule one in your city, email me at batraonline at gmail.com