Pay-Per-Click Behavioral Targeting

Last year I wrote extensively about major online players Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL using Behavioral Targeting. Microsoft and Yahoo have been very open about it but Google has not admitted openly about engaging in Behavioral Targeting.

I speculated about Google entering Behavioral Targeting, you can read my past blog posts at http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/search/label/google). Recently, Google Analytics Data Sharing option reconfirmed my belief about Google entering Behavioral Targeting and using all the data it collects via Google Analytics (and other applications) to better target the ads.

A recent survey by SEMP.org (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) found that four out of five advertisers are willing to increase their online advertising budget in order to add behavioral targeting to their pay-per-click campaigns.
The survey also found that

• 57% of online advertisers were willing to spend more on demographic targeting, such as age and gender
• Advertisers, on average, would pay 11% more for both behavioral and demographic targeting
• Some 40% of the respondents said they are not currently targeting or retargeting searchers but they plan to in the next 12 months

Considering these stats and all the things that I have observed (see my past blog posts), I won’t be surprised if Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and ASK soon start offering behavioral targeting to it’s Paid Search (PPC) advertisers. To get the most of out of behavioral targeting, they won’t limit the behavioral data to search only, they will most likely use every data point they collect about visitors in various places including browser toolbars.

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