Today as I strolled through the isles of Brookshire Brothers grocery store in my hometown in East Texas, I found myself purely searching for one brand. I typically have no intention of brand name buying, especially food, and hardly ever when shopping for clothes. Today was a bit different and I was glad the “Organics”, brand of food had great white packaging and an orange, green and yellow label with their blue trademarked, italicized “O” in Times New Roman. This brand label made it easy to find all of their different variety of food products. My attention was focused on buying anything and everything that this brand had to offer.

I try and provide the best quality food for our two kids Adalia and Takoda. We are all pretty picky eaters, so it says a great deal about the product when our group will eat every thing a brand has to offer. I commend the “O Organics” brand of food products for their great brand and simple business philosophy – “Eating organic food just makes sense.” We will continue to purchase this brand of food with it’s 300+ selection of items for as long as we can. Goodbye Wal-Mart, and hello Brookshire Brothers.

We usually get asked what we suggest when it comes to ad or marketing campaigns for products. Our response is almost exactly the same every time as seen below.

1) Depends on the product.
2) A strong web based information collection portal supported by direct marketing materials directing users to said site is always a sure thing.
3) If the product is not sale able on the web then that is still a great place for product info, consider it a billboard that you can control and have great viewer interaction.
4) We also recommend tracking your direct marketing campaigns to the minute with GPS so that you know exactly when your material lands in a hand or on a door, thus determining an exact response rate.
5) Once you spend money on a web presence, it is there for ever*, and you don’t have to worry about that loss in printed material Investment.
6) Do it right the first time and then you can worry about changing for the better.

“ISPs are tracking their customers’ Internet usage and selling that information to advertisers, an industry practice” according to Channelweb

below is Behavioral targeting – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Behavioral targeting or behavioural targeting is a technique used by online publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual’s web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select which advertisements to display to that individual. Practitioners believe this helps them deliver their online advertisements to the users who are most likely to be influenced by them.

Behavioral marketing can be used on its own or in conjunction with other forms of targeting based on factors like geography, demographics or the surrounding content.

Examples of behavioral targeting in advertising targeting systems include: Predicta BT, AdLINK 360, Adaptlogic, Avail, Boomerang, Criteo, DoubleClick (prior to 2002)[1], Leiki, nugg.ad, prudsys, ValueClick [2], and wunderloop.

Behavioral Targeting allows site owners or ad networks to display content more relevant to the interests of the individual viewing the page. On the theory that properly targeted ads will fetch more consumer interest, the seller may ask for a premium for these over random advertising or ads based on the context of a site.

Network Behavioral targeting

Advertising Networks use behavioral targeting in a different way to individual sites. Since they serve many adverts across many different sites, they are able to build up a picture of the likely demographic makeup of internet users. An example would be a user seen on football sites, business sites and male fashion sites. A reasonable guess would be to assume the user is male. Demographic analyses of individual sites provided either internally (user surveys) or externally (Comscore \ netratings) allow the networks to sell audiences rather than sites.[3] Although advertising networks used to sell this product, this was based on picking the sites where the audiences were. Behavioral targeting allows them to be slightly more specific about this.

This service is offered by (among others):Front Porch,[4] Tacoda, Burst, NebuAd[4], Phorm, ValueClick.

Concerns

Many online users & advocacy groups are concerned about privacy issues around doing this type of targeting. This is a controversy that the behavioral targeting industry is trying to contain through education, advocacy & product constraints to keep all information non-personally identifiable or to obtain permission from end-users. AOL created animated cartoons in 2008 to explain to its users that their past actions may determine the content of ads they see in the future.[5] Canadian academics at the University of Ottawa Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic have recently demanded the federal privacy commissioner to investigate online profiling of Internet users for targeted advertising.[6]

[edit] Notes and References

1. Olsen, Stefanie (2002-01-08). “DoubleClick turns away from ad profiles”. CNET News.com.
2. Arun, Fred (2008-07-21). “Two Large Ad Networks Embrace Behavioral Targeting”. clickz.com.
3. iMedia Connection article on Behavioral Targeting for Networks in the USA [1]
4. a b Rodgers, Zachary (2008-01-29). “Toby Gabriner to Helm ISP-Based Behavioral Ad Firm Adzilla”.
5. Story, Louise (March 10, 2008). “AOL Brings Out the Penguins to Explain Ad Targeting”. in Story, Louise (March 10, 2008). “To Aim Ads, Web Is Keeping Closer Eye on You”, The New York Times, The New York Times Company. Retrieved on 2008-03-09.
6. “Academics want watchdog to probe online profiling” (2008-07-28).