Online Behavioral Targeting
I’m a woman and I’m big fan of professional football, especially my team the Minnesota Vikings. Yet, if you ever watch the ads on a Sunday afternoon, you would think the advertisers didn’t know I existed. I don’t drive a truck, prefer wine over beer and I don’t take Viagra.
Traditional media and mass advertising create and place ads on television based on the largest demographic profile of the target audience. So if you don’t fit that profile you probably won’t be represented in those ads and they miss the opportunity to sell you anything. Which after all is their goal, right?
Now I don’t expect to see television ads for chardonnay while watching my Vikings, but what about reaching me online? Today, according to Nielsen Research, the average internet user spends 68 hours online every month. The most popular networks are Google and Yahoo! and both of these companies offer ad networks utilizing online behavioral targeting.
Web sites and online ad networks rely on technology that remembers and tracks your search topics and ads you’ve clicked on. They also know which articles you’ve read online and which products you researched and started to buy online but did not.
Yahoo! now claims to have over 200,000 profiles of Alaskans and their unique online behavior. That is about half of all those over the age of 18. It’s not surprising that this year The Anchorage Daily News, Alaska’s most popular content site, partnered with Yahoo! and now serves up ads utilizing online behavioral targeting.
