The Audience-Targeting Family Tree

Of the biggest challenges media planners and buyers face when they approach behavioral and audience targeting for the first time involves defining what behavioral targeting is and how it’s used by advertisers and publishers.

Of the biggest challenges media planners and buyers face when they approach behavioral and audience targeting for the first time involves defining what behavioral targeting is and how it’s used by advertisers and publishers.

Confusion stems from the many different ways behavioral targeting is defined by vendors that offer targeting solutions. In truth, a percentage of vendors who claim to be offering behavioral targeting solutions are in fact relying on more traditional targeting methodologies, such as demography, geographical targeting, and consumer purchasing patterns, to make their mojo work.

For the purposes of consistency, let’s agree that true behavioral targeting solutions must include a way of tracking and saving data points based on actual individual consumer actions. As you’ll see, even this definition provides a great deal of flexibility.

Let’s meet the family.

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