Is Behavioral Targeting Right For You?

Behavioral targeting has become more and more popular today then it ever has been before but how do you determine if it’s right for you? If you are considering implementing a behavioral targeting strategy or re-evaluating you current behavioral targeting solution, keep these tips in mind.

Leverage all aspects of your marketing organization.
Determine the types of categories of behaviors shown throughout your site by receiving direct responses and acquisition. Behavioral targeting should be evaluated on an advertiser by advertiser, and publisher by publisher basis. The behavioral targeting implementation should have both marketing insight and strong technology solutions that is practical as well as a successful long term solution in mind.

Determine site suitability.
Behavioral targeting isn’t effective or suitable for every Web site. Sites that offer differentiated and unique content work best. An example could be well defined sections of content for travel, shopping, and sports. These are great sites to target because they can effectively track category behaviors and use the information provided to provide results for advertisers.

Do Your Homework.
1) Conduct a complete analysis. Before launching a behavioral targeting campaign, review data to determine ad packages and develop unique offerings. Run internal tests in absence of customers or a back end analysis for at least 60 days to get a clear idea of well defined behaviors that would be suitable for potential advertisers.

2) Determine your audience. You want the most natural and logical behaviors to be aligned with your site as well as keeping it consistent. Usually there are only a few behavioral segments that will appeal to advertisers in any given site so don’t attempt to align your site with a behavior that isn’t suitable just to attract advertisers because the campaign performance will suffer.

3) Don’t overexpose. You want to avoid saturation, overexposure, and campaign cannibalization so monitor the frequency of all behavioral targeted ads so you can see their relevance and optimize them for overall ad performance.

4) Beware of advertisers. If you launch a behavioral targeted campaign, you will most likely attract a variety of advertisers and online ad media. Therefore, behavioral targeting can help you with new dialogue with prospects that are already identify with behavior based consumer purchasing. Highly recognizable brands, luxury goods, and strong demographic attachment are just a few prospects that you could benefit from. The more behavioral targeted solutions you do, the bigger results advertisers expect. Be prepared to show necessary reporting to demonstrate the results.

If you are considering a behavioral targeting strategy for your site, keep these tips in mind while determining if behavioral targeting is right for you.