Behavioral Targeting

Despite the great promise held by behavioral targeting—the effort to display ads to Internet users based on their online activities—more development is needed before it is a fully mainstream marketing method. Nonetheless, US spending on the technique is growing very rapidly. Interest in the area was also signaled by four recent acquisition announcements: Google-DoubleClick,Yahoo!-Right Media,WPP Group-24/7 Real Media and MicrosoftaQuantive. Among other motivations, these four purchases were a response to the rush of brand-focused advertisers to the Web.As Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s chief advertising strategist, noted at Goldman Sachs’s annual Internet conference in late May,“Targeted advertising in display is the exploding market,compared with search-based advertising.”

Consumenten besteden meer tijd online dan aan welk ander marketingkanaal ook. De rol van marketeers en consumenten verandert hierdoor fundamenteel.