blog.collarity.com

As we know, Interest-Based Targeting can and does work, if it is applied correctly. Unfortunately, the term behavioral targeting - also known as BT - was abused over time and it’s good that Google came along with a refreshing definition.

There have previously been two schools of ad targeting, followed by advertising networks:

• Contextual: Based on the content shown on a page, how it’s been tagged by publishers or how it’s scraped by the ad network, the ads are targeted on the fly to match this content. If you are reading about Turkey, the country, then you might see an appropriate Istanbul travel ad right along with a turkey recipe.

• Behavioral: Based on how publishers pre-define categories related to their site content. While simplified, if a site is about autos and in the network, an individual may be tagged and then see an auto ad while visiting an unrelated music destination on the network. Interests take precedence over the current behaviors or content.

So it’s icing on the cake to see Google jump on the interest bandwagon, which attempts to merge practices from the two schools (see Google video). Google will rely on pre-set categories and individual preferences and then deliver Interest-Based Targeted ads. It may solve the “turkey recipe shown with Turkey the country” matter. The question is whether this is really a step forward or just BT we have known for years. Is Interest-Based Targeting the same old BT, but in the hands of a larger or better machine?

At Collarity, we have always applauded harnessing of interests, and know that it’s important to understand what visitors surf collectively as a basis of ads and content targeting. While we place ads in front of individuals, Collarity is literally targeting to their interest groups rather than individual people. We have developed a platform that targets advertising based on anonymous users’ interests.

We rely on anonymous stats and dynamic segmentation of users not only to preserve and maintain a high privacy level but also because we have discovered that it’s more effective. Collarity doesn’t succeed by following anyone around the web or across sites - instead we look at the interests of segments on the publisher’s site, to better cater to their user interests.