Behavioral targeting

Behavioural (or behavioural) targeting is the technique used by online publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns by matching the content of their advertising to the known or anticipated interests of specific consumers. Although fragmented attempts were made by online publishers in the late 90s, the technique was only popularised by Yahoo in 2000. By 2004 online behavioural advertising had become embraced by the main advertising sales networks, creating enough advertising inventory to become a core element in online media planning in North America and Europe. The behavioural profiles are built using many different processes and in general use information collected through an individual's web browsing. This could include the web pages previously visited or the questions they have typed into search engines. Advertisers have discovered high uplifts in the effectiveness of their messaging by using behavioural targeting to either target people with known interests in the product or category, or those with demographic or; lifestyle interests that mean they could be interested. Further techniques include the retargeting of people based on previous advertising or content they have seen. The quality of any targeting technique is directly proportional to the breadth, depth and recency of the data. Behavioural targeting is one group of targeting techniques that advertisers can combine with other approaches such as targeting by time of day, day of week, geographical location, demographics or editorial content. See also: Behavioral advertising, Onsite behavioral targeting