Behavior

As I write this, I'm looking forward to moderating today's panel on behavioral targeting at OMMA East. Whereas "Behavioral Marketing 101" panels have been all the rage at some of the other industry conferences, I'm anticipating diving into this topic to explore the new products and ad models advanced by some of the category leaders. So don't expect the intro-level course. Attend this one if you want to get deeper into the topic.

Panelists will include representatives from Revenue Science, Tacoda, Advertising.com, Claria and WhenU. Whereas a year ago, one might have lumped Tacoda and Revenue Science in the same revenue model bucket, both companies have taken steps to further differentiate themselves from one another. On the desktop app side of the business, Claria and WhenU look to be diverging as well, with Claria having introduced a new network and a personalization platform recently. And Advertising.com seems to be doing some new and interesting things since they were acquired by AOL Time Warner.

With these market leaders looking to stake new claims in the behavioral marketing space, we need to ask some questions. Most importantly, what can be done now that couldn't be executed a year ago? I'd also like to explore how each company addresses the scalability issues that make behavioral marketing such a great idea on paper, but so challenging to execute in real-life situations.

There are new ways to use behavioral data emerging every day. Given that advertisers typically see a lift in ad effectiveness of orders of magnitude when they target ads behaviorally, one wonders how elements other than advertising targeting can be improved by behavioral data and technology. What about landing page conversion? Tailoring and personalizing content? In what other ways can behavioral data serve marketers and publishers? There's much more to it than just the targeting of ads.

There's also the notion of consumer backlash to explore. Time and time again, we've been reminded that consumers don't like marketers watching what they're doing unless there's a certain level of trust and an extension of value involved. In what ways will today's behavioral marketers develop consumer trust and transparency in their value proposition to consumers?

These are all issues we'll explore in further