* Om Malik discusses Google’s plans for behavioral ads
* Matthew Roche gives a general overview of optimizing behavioral targeting; and,
* Avinash Kaushik provides two excellent pre-requisites before implementing behavioral targeting

While one-to-one marketing has been oversold for years, behavioral targeting certainly makes a strong case for one-to-some. The “some” in this case is every segment you choose to develop creative for. The thing to bear in mind about behavioral targeting is this:
[...]

The difficulty seems to stem from a belief that it is complicated. Unfortunately this post, Jon Mendez’s post and others succeed in establishing the value of BT, but in communicating the significance of the opportunity, create the impression of major work and organizational change. To be fair, between no BT and full BT, there is work and change required.

Getting started requires neither of these things. Simply removing content, like a subscription solicitation for someone who has already subscribed and using the space for a paid ad, can be done in a day, and with no hand-wringing from the brand or legal folks. Small changes like this also have the benefit of providing a success story that can be used to convince the powers that be to allow more experimentation.

Like living healthier, a small step in the right direction with positive results can make the bigger commitment required for the full value much easier.

Great post Avinash! Thanks.

Resources for Behavioral/On Site Targeting:

- Omniture TouchClarity
- WebTrends Marketing Lab 2
- BlueLithium - Anil Batra: Behavioral Targeting 101
- Kefta
- Clickz: Target Behavior on the Site Level
- Avinash Kaushik: The Promise & Challenge of Behavior Targeting (& Two Prerequisites)
[...]

This new feature is using previous searches to fine tune what ads are presented to the searcher.

Behavioral targeting has had mixed opinions. Avinash Kaushik, who blogs on analytics at Occam’s Razor, sums up the method as: “Right thing to the Right person at the Right time..” [...]

I have taken forward the discussion in my blog. It is available at:
http://analyticsbhups.blogspot.com/2007/08/behavioral-targeting-follow-up-from.html

Bhupendra

As you rightly point out, the key to success using any Marketing tool and/or methodology is really understanding your business and your customers. To me, both are critical as sometimes because of your business focus, you may not be looking towards specifically targeting a certain segment of visitors — not to mention changes in your business outlook as a result of seasonality etc. Also IMHO, once you have mapped out the customer experiences x customer profiles against your offerings (through testing / surveys/ research), BT can be great to drive/address the basic CPRA (Conversion, Penetration, Retention, Attrition) on your site.

And lastly, I too am of the opinion that BT and Personalization are similar but yet different. The former (in my way of thinking) is focused towards a segment of customers — the key is segment. The latter is focused at an individual.

Regards,
NK

Next step…personalization kicked in - Google provided me with the tools/features to personalize my experience on the site. With iGoogle, I was able to pick and choose what I want to do.
Expanding on the analogy that I had on my post, BT would be telling me what is the best Chinese restraunt, but personalization is picking your veggies (being considerate to my friend Avinash here) to make the stir fry that you like.
I welcome your comments/feedback.
-Rahul

Three points that come to mind…

- This is a very new industry, there’s a lot of buzz around it, but little is yet agreed upon in terms of simple things like what each of the terms mean (i.e. targeting vs personalization vs testing). Being in the middle of this discussion from a vendor perspective (Kefta and Acxiom Digital), I can say that hosted services of every flavor want to distance themselves from the failed personalization approaches of the 90’s. They were heavy, IT centric applications that largely relied upon explicit statements from “customers” in order to change something. The focus was on delivering something different, not measuring the impact or lift caused by delivering that different message.

- A thought for Jonghee Jo from Victoria’s Secret… If tomorrow your marketing team offered an incredibly deep discount coupon across all of the major deal sites, what would happen to the nature of visitor needs? My impression of your brand is quality, but would this coupon drive large quantities of visitors with different needs? Often times the behavioral learning that is found through testing is relative to the majority population of visitors that you see at any point in time. Internal or external events can cause a shift in your customer needs. Similar is the concept of doing testing prior to the holiday shopping season, only to find that consumer habits change once the season is upon you.

- I thoroughly agree with Rahul Deshmukh… testing tools are page or asset centricity versus targeting solutions focus on marketing to the differences between site visitors, visitor centricity. Well stated!

Thanks!

Mark

unfortunately I have to say that I don’t understand what the difference between personalization and behavior targeting really is.

I just read this blog post on Anil Batra’s blog, where it says this:

“What is Behavioral Targeting
Behavioral Targeting (BT) is the ability to target users based on their behavior on the internet. Most commonly it used to target online ads but the technique can be very well used to target products and content.

Behavioral (Ad) Targeting promises to precisely target the audience that matter most. Hit the users with the right message, a message that they care about. It is all about audience.”

http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2006/09/behavioral-targeting-101.html

To me this sounds exactly like the personalization algorithm Google is trying to roll out for their search engine: collecting data from a users browsing history and that way displaying more relevant content to them.

Or what e-mail marketers (or offline database marketers in CRM) do when they try to target users better with their ads.

Maybe the main difference is that personalization is thought of as one-to-one marketing whereas behavior targeting is thought of as one-to-some marketing as “thinks” said in his blog post and as you (almost) say when you said this:

“When I think of BT I think of understanding micro micro segments of customers (small groups) and then understanding what they need, responding back to them with relevant content (in terms of creating) and using a BT system to target them efficiently and on a large scale.”

Thus BT is about delivering the most relevant message (ad or content or product) to micro micro segments of customers (small groups) whereas personalization is thought of as taking it a step further and trying to target people in a one-to-one fashion?

Sorry, Im just really confused now! lol

I am running A/B tests quite a lot recently and learning very valuable insights on user behavior. As you said, It will help me to prepare BT as a next step!

Behavioral targeting in my mind is “Real time CRM for Online customers at a session/visitor level”. MVT is page based and BT is visitor based. MVT soups content based on recipes, BT serves the right dish according to the individual’s taste buds.

Thanks,
Rahul

Wow! What happened yesterday? Suddenly, it seems like every site I read is talking about behavioral targeting. In case you missed them:

Om Malik discusses Google’s plans for behavioral ads
Matthew Roche gives a general overview of optimizing
Avinash Kaushik provides two excellent pre-requisites before implementing behavioral targeting

While one-to-one marketing has been oversold for years, behavioral targeting certainly makes a strong case for one-to-some. The “some” in this case is every segment you choose to develop creative for. The thing to bear in mind about behavioral targeting is this:…

You continue to test but a lot less, perhaps only radical changes or “interesting complex” changes.

I tend to think of BT as a continuous methodology, it is always there. You understand your customers, you create content, experiences, promotions, “stuff” and as a result of it you are constantly feeding your BT system. It in turn, I know touchclarity does this (others do it as well I am sure), tests the new stuff, learns from behavior and automatically targets “stuff” to the right people at the right time.

So maybe “constantly feeding” content is a stretch. Maybe you do it every week, month, couple months depending on your business and your ability to understand your customers. But you don’t have to test as much.

I hasten to add that this is a nirvana outcome. It is tough to get there, it takes time, you have to overcome your limitations to understand your customers and your ability to create content. Not easy.

Patrick : Behavior targeting is not personalization.

In some cases people call personalization behavior targeting, but they are completely different ball games.

You can use a BT system to personalize if you want but what is exciting about TouchClarity now, and about Kefta’s system from before is the ability to know nothing PII (Personally Identifiable Information) about a person and yet be able to target content.

This is my personal opinion: For the most part personalization is really really hard to do. It is difficult to understand each person, amongst the million who are on your site, takes too much time and too much effort. Then it is really really difficult to respond back to each person in a “personalized” way. You can hack it, but it is rather obvious to your customers that you are hacking!

When I think of BT I think of understanding micro micro segments of customers (small groups) and then understanding what they need, responding back to them with relevant content (in terms of creating) and using a BT system to target them efficiently and on a large scale.

I hope this helps.

I welcome the other BT Gods & Experts out there to add their wisdom to the discussion. :)

-Avinash.

Having been in the thick of the last round of Personalization (think LikeMinds, NetConversions, Personify), and having been in the heat of the testing revolution, I have my own point of view on how far math can go in marketing.

Regardless of whether behavioral targeting is the holy grail or just a solid tool in the toolbelt, it serves us all to think about Occam’s Razor and find the simpler option if it is available.

It is my fervent belief that the most important thing a marketer can do is engage with their consumer. As an exercise, start with the simple act of changing something purposefully that matters and see how it affects your customer. That is the simplest thing and still among the rarest.

Once you can do this, introduce segments, discover segments, pull data from analytics, go crazy with math. But do it deliberately, and constantly check and see how it effects your customer.