The Magic Behind Behavioral Targeting
Behavioral targeting is one of the hottest marketing strategies in digital marketing. This trend shapes the decision-making process in potential customers, viewers or clients and can give your business some serious leverage.
Behavioral targeting is a way to segment and reach audiences by actions such as websites visited, past purchases, and links clicked. Ultimately, it is a technique that utilizes a web user’s previous web browsing behavior to customize the types of ads they receive. This kind of targeting helps to create a personalized ad experience, building a better relationship with customers and driving higher ROI.
Behavioral targeting usually relies on user data such as:
- Webpages viewed
- Previous search terms
- Amount of time spent on a website
- Ads, content and buttons clicked
- Last date of website visit
- Previous purchases
- Searches within the site
- IP address, geolocation and demographics
In short, the process of behavioral targeting goes something like this: First, user data is collected and analyzed from a range of sources, but is normally gathered from third-party cookies. Second, the data is then used to create user segments based on overall behavior. For example, people who like to travel, people who frequently visit the same product category on a website, or people looking to purchase a certain product. Third, ad campaigns are then tailored to match a specific segment in order to increase the chances of engagement and conversion.
The benefits of behavioral retargeting can increase user engagement, the total number of ad click-throughs and conversion rates. Website experience, in turn, becomes more relevant and interesting to the user.