Behavior Targeted Advertising

I wanted to mention something I'd read about that isn't that new of a concept, but one I think we often overlook. Behavior targeted advertising - targeting the 95%+ of the time you are online other than search.

For example, let's look at John. John is a guy who's been thinking about opening a Roth IRA. As a marketer for my firm's Roth IRA I'm going to look smart by investing in Google and/or Yahoo text ads and showing my boss all the terms I've come up with one might search for a Roth IRA. So when people like John are searching about Roth IRAs - they'll see us in the paid search results (and hopefully in the organic results too). Yet, is this the best way to target John? What if the search John does is an afterthought and not the origination.

That's where behavior targeted ads comes in. We know that John is interested in opening a Roth IRA so we show him our advertising on the places he visits on the Web - places that have nothing to do with Roth IRAs and retirement accounts. After all, John wants to start a Roth IRA, but he doesn't spend all his time on retirement/finance websites. Even if he did, would an ad about a retirement account on a retirement/finance site really stand out (or would it get lost in the noise)?

Let's reinforce our Roth IRA on sites John visits so that when he does get to search (if he hasn't already clicked on our ads) he reviews the results and picks our brand out because he's familiar with it.

So, I'm still going to invest in paid search, but I'm going to rethink how I advertise my brand to people like John. It's pretty simple really. Think for a moment how you use the web. If you're wanting to buy an espresso machine do you spend all day on sites that deal with coffee? Or are you reading blogs, sending emails, sharing photos, reading news, weather, driving directions, checking movie reviews, online banking, or buying a book? Probably the latter.