In their 2011 white paper on the topic of ‘behavioural targeting’ the authors, Chen and Stallaert identify this area of online advertising as doubling in the last three years combined with the fact ‘when it comes to users’ intent to click on an advertisement, the results are even more staggering: experiments have shown that click-through rates can be increased by as much as 670% using behavioural targeting!!! Yikes!!!
Behavourial targeting explained
What is Behavioural Targeting?
So what is this Behavioural targeting? Behavioural Targeting is engaged by Search Engine companies who look into your search history to determine your specific interests. A little practical demonstration at this point. Go to your browser and open up your “History’. Take a look at how long it has been since you cleared this out, maybe you never have. Now you can see how ‘data mining’ this could reveal some very revealing truths about your particular interests.
Non-User-Initiated Video is automatically played when users access ’On Demand’ video. When this is viewed prior to the feature, it is called ‘’Pre-roll” advertising and it is a huge growth area. It forms part of what is called ‘Behavioural Targeting’. Spending on Behavioural Targeting has doubled in the last three years in America, a trend that will increase on these shores too.
‘On demand’ video is fast becoming the media of choice of the generation that are not classed as the ‘millennials’ (born 1980-2000). This demographic are typically, sub 35 year olds who are turning en mass to mobile devices to consume what we would more commonly call television. The truth be told like their cousin the newspapers, the bell has tolled for terrestrial television (broadcast using radio signals). Once the big corporations have found a way to monetise the shift to ‘Video On Demand’ they can cull off television as we and our fathers know it.
During a recent trip to New York I had lunch with an associate who was my handler when I worked for Scholastic the book publishers. Scholastic are a behemoth in the publishing world, publishing school books for the North American market. Laura has moved on to greener pastures heading up an online entity, Biograpy.com part of A&E Networks, a television network collaboration between Hearst Publishing and the Walt Disney company, both big players who use all the latest techniques.
In her capacity running the online part of Biography, Laura confirmed this and told me that her employers are gearing to this seismic shift. I suspect they will have a similar impact on television as digital media did on print. That day is upon us as online advertising gets more sophisticated with each passing day.
An example of this is Lotame.com, who offer services like ‘Data Management Platform‘ which help companies drive increased revenues and engagement by assessing their customers data thoroughly. This is where computers excel in dredging this data for information and when combined with behavioural targeting, it is not hard to see the power that it is capable of unleashing.
The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets
If you are interesting in how this frontier is panning out read the link here from the Wall street Journal, note that it is written four years ago and consider how much information has been mined on you over the last four years!! At this point you might be saying hold on a second, just how much do these various companies know about me already? The truth be told I suspect that horse has bolted long ago so as a business if you can’t beat them….. well.
Here at MakinMediaMobile we are getting terrific results for clients using social media to get their message to where they want it to go. For more info, check our explainer videos page.