When visiting sites such as Myspace and Google, have you ever noticed that colorful, flashing banner ad to the left or right of the page? Whether it was the shape of the ad or its actual content, something about it caught your attention. Advertisers strive to connect people to what they advertise by creating more relevant public notices to place on the Internet.
The question on everyone’s mind: how do advertisers know when and where to place their ads? Well, the answer lies in a technique known as behavioral targeting. Used by online publishers and promoters, the technique is used to increase the effectiveness of a campaign.
Behavioral targeting uses information collected on a person’s web browsing behavior. Certain activities include: the particular pages visited, performed searches, and how often an individual may stay on a web site. Advertisers make use of these behaviors in order to select which advertisements they should display to certain groups of people. Many believe that this helps them deliver their online ads to the users who are most likely to be interested.
For example, companies who sell items such as shoes and clothes place ads on Facebook. Conducted research has revealed that these students are the top customers at clothing and shoe stores across the world. Behavioral date can also be combined with demographic and past purchase history in order to produce a higher degree of targeting.
Majority of web sites use a unique cookie to identify visitors and to track them throughout their web journey. This helps the page to decide on what specific content it should display. Behavioral targeting techniques can also be applied to any online material on the principle that it either improves the visitor experience or it benefits the web site in an ethical way.
