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Behavioral Targeting

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17 Nov 2022
Dharmesh Patel

Behavioral Targeting

Ultimate Things to know about Behavioral Targeting

Advertising is a challenging endeavor. Marketers can simply reach the wrong audience or fail to deliver the proper message that can engage or covert consumers. Today, targeting randomly is a thing of the past. Marketers have several methods to ensure that the correct message reaches the right person at the right time. Campaigns that are using utilize behavioral targeting and behavior tracking are yielding incredible results.

What is behavioral targeting?

Behavioral targeting is a marketing strategy that uses previous or historical behavior to customize the types of ads consumers see. Historical behavior is sourced through set datasets that describe how audiences behave. Marketers can then use this to make campaigns and ads that match each consumer’s actual behavior.

What are the benefits of behavioral targeting?

Behavioral targeting is a strong marketing tool that is rooted in the data-centric, modern world that people live in. But it isn’t all about using technology and numbers. Behavioral targeting provides value to both consumers and advertisers.

Advertiser benefits

  • Improved engagement for advertisers: Understanding consumer habits aids advertisers to mark audiences that have engaged with specific touch points or products. It also helps to identify audiences that are in the correct moment or behavior for a particular campaign. Focusing on customers with no brand awareness or behavioral targeting will limit engagement. Using behavioral targeting will improve several critical metrics, such as conversions or clicks
  •  Matching consumer needs with messaging: Customized messaging converts more users and ultimately decreases the amount of wasted ad spending. Proper ads are much more likely to move customers along the purchase funnel than generic ads that are not customized. Ads that align with a consumer’s historical behavior are much more likely to convert than ones that don’t.
  • Improving the bottom line: Advertisers ultimately want to get the best possible return on investment on their ads and campaigns. Delivering ads that match the audience’s historical behavior is more likely to leverage conversions than ones that are generic. With behavioral targeting, companies can see an increase in new business, engagements, repeat customers, and other key metrics.

Consumer benefits

  • An improved ad experience: Consumers aren’t always interested in giving their data. But they also get irritated with ads that are irrelevant or ads where the experience is not engaging. That’s why, when surveyed, more people prefer personalized advertising. This behavioral targeting ultimately improves their experience.
  • Better efficiency: Ads can be a fast route to purchase, providing a quick way of identifying the best product or service for their needs without a long searching process. This upgrades efficiency for consumers, allowing them to get to storefronts fast and find the most relevant products quickly.
  • Awareness of new products: By looking into ads that are customized, consumers can keep up to date with new products or services that interest them. Retargeting based on behavioral targeting can also aid to complete purchases that a customer was distracted from.

How does behavioral targeting work?

The process of behavioral targeting on the highest level comprises collecting information about a customer or a person and then using the same information to deliver ads that match the same. Gathering information can be done in multiple ways, and it can come from several different sources. Let’s look into some data sources that are used for behavioral targeting:

  • CRM
  • Apps
  • Websites
  • Marketing systems

These sources provide a great variety of data that includes:

  • Website cookie data: Data on how users interact and behave with websites is a valuable method of behavioral targeting.
  •  Mobile device data: Cookies work too on mobile devices. Understanding the behavior of the target customer on a mobile phone can help to understand which message which could work best in an advertising campaign.
  •  Geographic location: Anonymised location can be extremely worthy for advertisers. Since the early days of bid stream datasets, device behavior can be aptly tracked to build up detailed profiles of the behavior of customers then can form strong, behavioral-based segments for advertising.
  • Subscription data: Companies that have a log-in system need the users to enter information and details about them. These fields can be used to understand the users, with interests, addresses, and contact details to help with behavioral targeting

Process of behavioral targeting

  • The data collection process: User data can come from various sources. Depending on the type of source, there are many ways to gather data. For website behavior, a pixel is generally used. This process updates and creates cookies that understand how the user behaves with the site. 
  •  Organization and segmentation: Once this behavioral data exists in a central location, the next step is to sort individual customers into groups that share the same behaviors.

This classification varies significantly depending on the product, goals, or company. For instance:

  • Potential customers that go to work out in the gym
  • Visits gym location 2-3 times a month
  • Current customers who like meat, eggs, etc
  • Application and Delivery of behavioral targeting: Specified ad campaigns are delivered to match each segment. This procedure makes the advertising more pinpointed for each segment and leverages the chance of boosting conversions and engagement.
  •  Activating behavioral targeting: All of this behavioral targeting data can be used across multiple campaigns and in different advertising channels. That’s the advantage of having a centralized place to store the data.