Behavioral Targeting

Behavioral targeting is a practice used by online publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns. This system enables marketers to create personalized messages to targeted audiences based upon their web based activities that may include browsing history, search request, and purchase history. With the ability to anticipate user behavior, companies are able to increase the relevancy of their marketing activities, boosting increased engagement and conversion rates.

Purpose of Behavioral Targeting

Behavioral targeting is intended to maximize the impact of advertising by delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. With the ability to use intelligence to make decisions, companies can:

• Provide relevant content that will make a good user’s experience.
• Increase the conversion rate of your site by targeting users with special interest.
• Get the most value out of your ad spend by targeting high potential audiences.
• Create stronger relationships by listening to customers as individuals.

How Behavioral Targeting Is Done

Behavioral targeting in practice Behavioral targeting works through a cycle of collecting, analyzing, and using data. Here’s how it usually goes:

Data Collection	Marketers gather data from various sources, including website cookies, social media interactions, and mobile apps. This data encompasses user activities such as pages visited, time spent on site, and items clicked.
Data Analysis	The collected data is analyzed to identify patterns and trends in user behavior. Advanced analytics tools and algorithms are employed to segment users based on their interests and preferences.
Ad Delivery	Once user segments are defined, personalized advertisements are created and delivered to these specific groups. This ensures that the ads are relevant and engaging, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Best Practices for Behavioral Targeting

To successfully apply behavioral targeting, marketers should follow these best practices:

• Privacy: Make sure that the data is not collected without the user consent, and follow privacy laws like way provided by GDPR.
• Use Good Data: Use good, clean, up-to-date data to make intelligent targeting decisions.
• Segment Wisely: Build the right user segments to serve all your users personalized content at the right time.
• Test & Optimize: Test various versions of the ads and optimize according to the performance metric.
• Do not Stop Tracking and Tweaking: Keep track of how your campaigns do its job and make the necessary changes to keep them productive.

FAQs

Related Terms

• Contextual Targeting
• Data Privacy
• Personalization
• Retargeting
• Customer Segmentation