Behavioural advertising, also known as behavioural marketing or behavioural targeting, is a form of online marketing employed by companies in order to maximise the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns.
This type of marketing has long been used by companies and traditionally consisted of repeat mailings to existing customers. Online behavioural advertising, however, involves targeting advertisements to an individual, based on their web- browsing behaviour. Thus, different people will see different ads on the same web page. For example, two ladies visiting the same online bingo site will see different advertisements, according to their interests. The animal lover may see a banner promoting a particular wildlife charity and the thrill-seeker may receive an advertisement regarding a well-known theme park.
Advertising networks use behavioural marketing in a different way to individual sites. Through posting many adverts across thousands of different sites, they are able to build up a clear picture of the demographic makeup of their intended targets. For example, someone accessing male fashion sites, online bookmakers and football sites would be assumed to be male. Such demographic analyses of individual sites allow networks to locate and promote to their intended audience.
This achives tighter results and successes than contextual marketing, and also saves on costs. Online companies wanting to opt-in for behavioural advertising join the Open Internet Exchange, and in doing so they receive better per-click payments than other services offer.
Behavioural Advertising has been surrounded by much controversy. Many online users and advocacy groups are concerned about issues of privacy surrounding the system. The tools for the system were developed by US firm Phorm, and they assert that any data they collect is anonymous and also that users can opt out of the service via their internet service providers at any time Despite this, many believe that this system, known as Webwise, breaches customers’ privacy rights. One advantage is that users of Webwise are warned if they try to access a phishing site listed on any database available to Phorm.
Phorm works by placing a cookie on a user’s machine that contains a random identifying number. The cookie then tracks that particular user’s web activity, in order to market the right advertisements to them. The cookie does not collect any personal information or track secure sites but instead collects search terms used and keywords from websites visited. Phorm stresses that such tracking is anonymous, with no personal data ever being collected and no profile of the user being created. They also point out that as a user is browsing the internet, banners will advertise the fact that Webwise is on and they can click on the ads in order to switch it off.
Simon Davies of Privacy International has stated how ‘behavioural advertising is a rather spooky concept for many people’. Phorm’s tracking of people’s web habits is seen by some as an invasion of privacy, and privacy campaigners believe that Webwise should be opt-in, rather than opt-out. However, Webwise will only benefit from behavioural advertising if millions take part, and an opt-in scheme would never achieve this.
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Tags: behavioral marketing, behavioral targeting, behavioral advertising
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