11 Nov How Social Media Will Play A Big Role In Behavioral Advertising

Behavioral advertising has been very popular among marketers and advertisers in the previous years and for a very good reason.  The idea of presenting ads to highly targeted segments based on behaviors such as search inquiries and browsing habits should be attractive to any advertiser.  You combine this information with demographic and geographic information and you have a highly sophisticated targeting system.

In all its greatness, there is still the problem of timing when it comes to behavioral targeting.  In order to generate sales advertisers must act in precise opportune moments.  Fortunately for us, social media is changing that.

Traditionally, data was gathered for behavioral targeting through surveys, public records, and questionnaires.  This of course is pretty labor intensive but social media is changing how this data is collected.  A user’s online footprint tends to offer up most demographic information that advertisers are looking for.  Not only are they presenting demographic data but they are also presenting their wants and likes, their opinions, their interests, and what they are focusing on.  The hard part is that most of this data comes in real time and can be hard to track.  It is also hard to track how friends on the different social networks can influence the buying decision and overall behaviors.

According to a recent Mediapost.com blog, social media is going to play a huge role in the future of behavioral advertising.  The blog says that determining the “in the moment intent” is crucial in successfully delivering targeted ads.  It needs to be precise and this is where behavioral advertising has come up short in the past.  While search has done well with behavioral targeting in relation to search keywords, real-time information will be crucial for display advertising on the web