Google Adwords Remarketing: Behavioral Targeting

This week Google Adwords announced that it is rolling out a feature called "Remarketing". This feature is essentially "Retargeting" which I described in my blog post Retargeting 101

How does it work?

You visit a site, look at some products, maybe add some of the products to the shopping cart but then decide not to buy them because you need some more time to think about it. You close your browser and are done with that site. Few minutes later you go back to your computer and browse to another site, say a news site. As the page of that site loads so does an Ad that is from the site that you visited yesterday (where you looked at some products but did not buy). For Google Remarketing to work, the news site will need to be a part of Google content network.

So far Google used to show Adsense ads based on the content of the page but now it will start showing ads that match the interest of the person viewing the page (as identified by a cookie and retargeted by a marketer).

Example

Neel visited Netflix. He looked at the site but decided that he is not going to become a member at that time. He went back to his work and completely forgot about Netflix, maybe because he got a movie from Redbox.

Few minutes later he gets back on his computer and browses to a site to read about Indian Food Recipe. This site happens to be a part of Google content network. Even though the content that Neel is reading has nothing to do with the movies, Google’s remarketing shows him a Netflix ad.

What is happening behind the scene?

Note: This is a hypothetical example and I am not sure if Netflix is really participating in the Google Adwords Remarketing.

Netflix, which participates (let's assume) in Google Adwords decides to remarket to people who had visited Netflix in past but did not sign up for the service. Netflix decides to use Google Adwords new "Remarketing" feature for this remarketing.

Netflix sets up a remarketing campaign in Google Adwords. Netflix puts a JavaScript from Google Adwords on its pages to identify those people (audience) whom it wants to remarket i.e. people who came to the site but did not sign up for the service. This JavaScript lets Google know which cookies belong to the audience segment that Netflix wants to target. When Google comes across a person (cookie), who belongs to the audience segment that Netflix wants to remarket, on its content network, it will show them a Netflix ad (remarketing ad) instead of an ad that matches the content of the page the person is on.

I speculated this in 2007

In 2007, I speculated that Google will roll out something along these lines. I highly encourage you to read the following blog post as I think there is more to come from Google on Remarketing and Behavioral Targeting.

• Google and Behavioral Targeting
• Google and Behavioral Targeting Part II
• Google Analytics Data Sharing

And some more Google related posts: All about Google

Comment? Questions?

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Google Officially Begins Behavioral Targeting

In March of 2007 I wrote that Google should enter behavioral targeting and I even predicted that it will. Guess what? On Wednesday (March 11, 2009) Google officially announced that it will start “Interest Based Advertising” (which is also called “Behavioral Targeting”). Google has tried Behavioral Targeting in past and started talking about ad personalization, but this is the first time it officially announced that it will start Behavioral Targeting.

In my post titled Google and Behavioral Targeting I wrote:

“I think it is a matter of time when Google start connecting the dots and announce it’s entry into Behavioral Targeting. They might call it something else but at the core it will be leveraging the visitors’ behavior all across the web to better target ad on its network.”

At this point I am not clear on where Google will collect this data from. I encourage you to read my blog post to see what sort of data Google can potentially use for Behavioral targeting.
Google’s large footprint (e.g. Google Search, Google Analytics, Adsense, Adwords, AdManager, Google Checkout, Blogger and list goes on) will surely draw privacy concerns with this announcement.

According to Informationweek.com:

“To counter potential criticism, Google has taken steps to offer some transparency into how it delivers ads and to give consumers some measure of choice, and control. It has, however, made one important choice for its users by forcing them to opt out of behavioral ads rather than inviting them to opt in.

Google provides information about how it serves ads through the Ads By Google link that accompanies Google ads. It also created a tool called the Ads Preference Manager, which allows users to "view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you." And it provides users with the option to opt out from the receiving the AdSense/DoubleClick cookies used to track user interests. “

The thing that really bugs me is that by default all the visitors (who visit any site that uses Google products such as adsense and maybe Google Analytics) and all the sites (publishers using Google products) are automatically opted-in to share their data with Google for targeting.
Visitors (like you and me) and publisher (like me - I use Google Analytics and Adsense and this blog is on blogger) will have to take an extra step to opt out. For visitors this opt-out will work via cookie and if they delete the cookie they will be opted back in. (See my post on How to Opt out of Behavioral Targeting Networks).

As I say in all my presentations on Behavioral Targeting - "It's a Targeted Targeted Targeted Targeted World". You will be Targeted.

Other blog post on this topic that you might be interested in:

• Google and Behavioral Targeting Part II


• Google and Behavioral Targeting Part III – Google Buys Doubleclick

Comments? Questions?

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Search Behavioral Targeting

Microsoft and Google both have plans for using users past search behavior to provide tailored search results, practice commonly known as Behavioral Targeting. While companies like Revenue Science and Tacoda (now part of AOL) use users web surfing behavior on the internet to determine what users are interested in and server Relevant Ads, search giants are using the past search queries and click though activity to determine users intent and show them relevant search results (organic and paid ads).

As these practices become more prevalent no two users will see the same results on search engine results page for same queries, some of this is already happening. In future even the same user might see her results change from one day to another based on what he/she searched and clicked on between those two days.

An example of how search behavioral targeting might work A user looks for hotels in Bahamas and then search for Scuba Diving lessons the next day, she might see the search results (organic and paid) that combine both the queries to show her Scuba Diving Lessons in Bahamas. Yet another day she decides to search for Jamaica. Guess what? Her organic and paid results might show her Hotels, Airfares (though she never searched for it) for Jamaica and maybe Bahamas or even some other Caribbean destination. She might also get results for local Scuba Diving lessons. So why will the search engine showing all these results when user never explicitly searched for them? Search engine is trying to determine user's intent based on what user searched for and then show the customized results based on the intent. In this case the user's intent is clear; she is looking to go somewhere, most likely in Caribbean. Since she is searching from a geo location other than Caribbean, she might need flight and hence airfare might be shown. She has already indicated she needs Hotel and is looking for Scuba diving lessons so her search results are related to those keywords as well. Once the intent is determined search engine can show can show customized results for a particular user. As the user searches more her intent become even clearer and the possibilities of how search results can be customized for this user are endless.

Last July Google started using immediate search queries to show targeted paid search results. Google is now expanding the time frame that it uses to look for search queries. Here is what NYTimes.com reported on Google’s plan:

Nick Fox, a director of product management who looks after ads on Google’s search site, said the company was now testing the use of more search queries in its ad targeting. He did not describe how it was doing that. But Internet experts said that it was most likely using its cookies.
Mr. Fox said that Google’s approach was different from what Yahoo, AOL and others call behavioral targeting. Those companies look at what a user did a few days earlier to show them ads about the same topic today. Google says it believes that search engine advertising is most effective if it relates to what the user has most recently searched for.
“We are trying to understand what the user is trying to do right now,” Mr. Fox said. “In some cases, those queries are ambiguous, so you need a little more context.”
Google’s previous system of looking at a user’s immediate past query was not useful enough, he said. “It is probably not just the previous query that matters,” Mr. Fox said. “You want to know if the user is still doing the same thing. You wouldn’t want to go back a month. You wouldn’t want to go back a day. But you may want to go back two or three queries.”

Microsoft plans to take it one step further and expand the “behavioral targeting” to the organic search results. Here what is what CNET reported:

Specifically, the company believes examining a full sequence of user queries can lead to more useful results. Today, the company only keeps track of the immediately prior search, but often users use search engines to explore subject areas broadly, said Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft's search, portal and advertising platform group, at the Search Engine Strategies conference.
"I believe this notion of understanding user intent--being able to analyze (search queries) and come up with search patterns and use them to shape the search experience--is one of the most important areas for us," Nadella said.

Recently Behavioral Targeting has been under a lot of fire from privacy advocates and lawmakers. It will be interesting to see how privacy police reacts to search behavioral targeting. Though Behavioral Targeting from Revenue Science is anonymous, Search Behavioral Targeting is based on user provided information (search keyword), which can easily be tied to PII information.

I have always advocated an opt-in model for Behavioral Targeting, a system where users give their consent to be tracked and have an easy option to turn the tracking on or off. I believe that Search behavioral targeting makes it even more desirable to have an opt-in model.

Comments? Questions?

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Google Ad Planner

A lot of you might already know that Google announced the release of Google Ad Planner. This free media research and planner tool allows advertisers/agencies to find the Web sites that match their desired target audiences so that they can decide where to spend their advertising dollars.

This tool along with other tools such as Google Analytics Benchmarking, Google Trends for Websites positions Google well in competition with Nielsen , Quantcast, Hitwise and Compete.

I got my account to Google Ad Planner last week and I can tell you that I was impressed. Yes, there are a lot of features that are not there yet but nonetheless this tool is pretty powerful. Using this tool you can find smaller sites to advertise that you would normally not look at.

How does Google Ad Planner Work

1. When you first enter the tool it show you how many total Unique Visitors and Pageviews that you can reach (that is total internet usage) if you advertised on the whole internet.


2. Then you can choose specific country and/or language to narrow down your target audience.


3. Next you can enter any demographic information to further narrow down your target audience. The demographics that are available are gender, age range, education and household income.


4. Finally you can narrow or expand your target audience by particular sites. You have two options in this filter to choose from
   
   1. any site below
   2. all sites below
   
   Below is the description of this filter from Google Ad Planner Help.
   Choosing any site below means any internet user in the sample set who meets at least one of the criteria will be included in your audience.
   Choosing all sites below means internet users in the sample set must meet all of the criteria in order to be included in your audience.
   For example, if you specify 'Site A,' 'Site B,' and 'Site C' as sites your audience is likely to visit, then select the all sites below filter, only internet users in the sample set who visit all three sites will be included in your audience.
   If, however, you select the any site below filter, an internet user in the sample set who only visits Site A and Site C will still be included in your search results.
   


5. Another filter option is to limit your audience to only those sites that are in Google Content Network and the ad sizes these publishers support. This option is very useful if you are limited to using Google Adwords for your media buys.

Apart from Media planning, this tool can be used to do competitive analysis. For example, it can show you what percentage of your users also go to your competitor’s site. It can show you what other sites your competitor’s visitors visit – Good for analysis and then planning your media buy. It can show you the demographic mix of your competitors visitors.

Like Google trends, Google Ad Planner needs to be integrated into Google Analytics. Microsoft Gatineau overlaid some of the demographic data into the web analytics reporting, Google just showed you that they have that data too, plus some more. So it is matter of time when this data will be available in Google Analytics.

Google started using its Monopolistic Powers? Do No Evil?

On Monday, I wrote about Google Trends for Websites, a tool that lets you trend and compare unique visitor counts for websites.

It combines data from variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. Remember, a while back Google asked you to opt-into data sharing in Google Analytics, this is one place where your data is being used.

If you don’t want your site to be listed in this tool because you don’t want you competitors to know how you are doing, then how do you opt-out?

Let’s assume that you are using Google Analytics and have opted-in to Google Analytics Data Sharing. In that case Google should be using your Google Analytics data to show your site starts in Google Trends, that is more accurate than any other kind of data (well sort of). So if you do opt-out from Google Analytics data sharing, Google will revert to other sources of data e.g. toolbar, Google search data etc, which means you will still be listed in Google Trends for Websites.

The only way to completely remove your site from Google Trends from websites is by opting-out of Google Search engine by using a robot.txt to not let googlebot crawl your site. Remember, by doing so you will probably loose a good chuck of you traffic, traffic that comes via Google search engine. And why would you do that? In other words, you don’t have a choice. You are opted-in in Google Trends for websites by default and you have no way out. (Note, even if you could opt-out of Google Trends, competitors can still find out about your traffic etc using other services such as comScore but this one is Free so makes your data widely available).

On the other hand Google Properties such as Google.com, Orkut, do not have to follow the same process. According to Google, "We do not show Google.com properties on Trends for Websites. We have policy of not providing interim financial guidance, and have decided not to release Google numbers in accordance with that policy." Hmmm...what about other companies? Should Google not respect their policy?

Now won’t you call using (abusing) your monopolistic power?

Comments?

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Google Collecting Data on 3rd Party Sites to Target Ads on Google.com?

Is Google collecting data on the 3rd party sites to target Ads on Google.com? A user called "Discovery" on Search Engine Watch Forums reported that Google showed targeted ads (sponsored search results) on Google.com based on this user's behavior on 3rd party sites (Fry's, Circuit City, HP.com and Best Buy).

Here is what “Discovery” wrote:

“As far as I knew Google's PPC was strictly KW search based, then an odd thing happened yesterday.

Without going to Google I had visited Fry's, Circuit City, HP.com and Best Buy looking for a PC for a family member. After some research on these sites I decided I wanted to look at some comparison engines. I opened up a new browser window and went to Google, I did a search for "Comparison engines".

My results were very interesting.

Instead of a generic list of comparison engines touting to find the best prices for all products all the advertisements were related to PCs! Specifically HP PC's! I had not done a search on Google at any time for PCs, or on their shopping site.

Is Google using behavioral targeting already? I had heard there were announcements that this would happen with the acquisition of DoubleClick, but I have had no notice that it was in practice?

If it is being tested, how does this type of advertising effect the KW advertisements that are competing with it?”

So the question is “Is Google doing Behavioral Targeting on Search results using visitors behavior off the search engine?”

I have written quite few blog posts on this topic and have always believed that Google will get into Behavioral Targeting sooner or later.

It started “in-session” behavioral targeting on the Google search engine, which uses a user previous search query and combines with current query (both in same session) to provide sponsored results on the SERP (search engine results page).

This person noticed that Google was using more than search data to target sponsored results on Google SERP. The kind of behavioral targeting that this person is talking about can only happen if:

1. Companies such as Best Buy, Fry’s, etc share their data with Google and allow Google to tie the users behavioral data collected on their site with other data that Google collects about those users (using a common cookie or some other common identifier).
   For this kind of data sharing to happen, Google (or Doubleclick) code has to be implemented on the pages (or servers) on those sites. I did not find any code, but it is possible that the code is there because if these sites are doing online advertising using Doubleclick then they must be putting the code to measure the success of these online ads. However, I highly doubt that they will let Google (Doubleclick) use the data collected on their site to power Google Search results unless Google is using the data to put their ad in front of users. Think about this. Why would Best Buy allow Google to use its data and allow it to show Circuit City’s or some other competitor ad?


2. Google collects this data via a toolbar or some other application that tracks user across the sites and on search engines.
   This sounds like an option that might have been used to collect data, if Google really did do Behavioral Targeting. I am not sure if the user had a Google Toolbar installed. If the user did have a Google Toolbar, then Google could collect the data (and it does) and can use it anyway (debatable) (as long as they state so in their privacy policy). In this case, Google does not need to seek permission from Best Buy or Circuit City, because user, by installing the toolbar (and accepting the terms), is giving permission to Google to collect the data.
   

This brings up few more questions.

• Who owns the data? It is up for debate.


• Is it fair to Best Buy or Circuit City or any other site owners? That is a question that needs a bigger discussion.


• Does Google has power and scale to collect data across sites and do targeting? Absolutely.

Comments?

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Google Analytics Data Sharing

Google Analytics has an option to allow you to share your analytics data with Google in return for services like Google Benchmarking and enhanced ad features that will be released in future. Google provides following two options for data sharing.

1. With Google products only
   
   What do you get with this option? Enable enhanced ad features and an improved experience with AdWords, AdSense and other Google products by sharing your website's Google Analytics data with other Google services. Only Google services (no third parties) will be able to access your data.
   


2. Anonymously with Google products and the benchmarking service
   
   What do you get with this option? Enable benchmarking within Google Analytics by sharing your website data in an anonymous form. Google will remove all identifiable information about your website, combine the data with hundreds of other anonymous sites in comparable industries and report aggregate trends in the benchmarking service. Google will also use this data in anonymous form to improve our products and services.

Since companies are concerned about their data, the first question that most of them are asking is “Should we share data with Google and how will the data be used?”
In this post I will provide my views on Google Analytics data sharing service. Please note that I am not associated with Google or any Google entity and have not worked with them in any capacity. These are my views only, based on my past experience with Analytics , Online Adverting and Behavioral Targeting companies and services.

So what do I think?

As I had written in past, Google will be entering the Behavioral Targeting space. For it to realize full power of Behavioral Targeting it will need to aggregate the data it collects from sites across the web via its various services such as Google Toolbar, Adsense, Adwords, Google Analytics, YouTube, Google Checkout, Google Optimizer etc. Since there is so much concern about privacy and data usage by Companies like Google, it will create a lot of problem for Google if they just start aggregating all this data. To make sure Google is easing these concerns about how Google can use the data it collects from its services, in particular data from its business oriented services such Google Analytics, Adword etc , it has to seek permission from the site owners (and visitors).
Google is starting this with Google Analytics. It is asking your permission to allow them to aggregate your Google Analytics data in return for some free services such as Benchmarking and others services yet to come.

Option 1

Let’s start with Option 1 “With Google products only”. The description of this option can be interpreted in the following two ways

1. If you chose this option your Analytics data will be shared by other Google services that you use. This data will only be used to enhance Google products, Adwords, Adsense etc. used by you using your Google Analytics data. So they are asking you to opt-in into tighter integration of these products (sort of like Omniture genesis). Your data will not be shared with any other company or used to enhance Adwords or Adsense for any other company.


Or it could also mean


2. Your data will be used at an aggregated level to enhance Adwords, Adsense or other Google products to help Google. This is along the lines of Behavioral Targeting. Say you operate an online golf store. You have some buyer who frequently come and buy products from you. Google knows a lot about those users (e.g. they buy golf balls on regular basis and hence are avid golfers). When these users goes on another sites that serves Adsense ads, Google can serve ads about Golf balls or other Golf products even though that site might have nothing to do with Golf, but it knows that these visitors are avid golfers and are more likely to click on golf ads. Now these ads could be yours or of your competitors, you won’t know. Also Google will be able to charge more as they will allow advertisers to reach the right target customers, a great deal for the advertiser and Google. This raises 2 main questions (and maybe a lot more).
   
   
   
   1. Why should you allow Google to use your data to power your competitors’ ads and hence loose customers?
   
   
   2. Why should you allow Google to charge more for targeting based on the data that was collected on your site? Shouldn’t you get a piece of it?
   
   

Option 2

“Anonymously with Google products and the benchmarking service” has the following two components

1. Benchmarking: Most of the companies want to benchmark and see how they are doing compared to other companies in their vertical, size etc. This sort of data is usually available from companies like Nielsen Net Ratings, Comscore, Hitwise, Compete for a fee. Realizing the needs of consumers Google Analytics is providing this service as an option in Google Analytics. The data is anonymous and aggregated so I don’t have a problem with letting them use my data and provide me free benchmarking data. (Note: I had talked about them entering this space in my blog post, on April 13 , 2007 ( “Google and Behavioral Targeting” , way before they released the data sharing services).



2. Google Products: Even tough Google is saying that it will make the data “anonymous”, what it really is saying is that it will remove information about your site from the data (the site where data is collected). In nutshell, I think this still refers to the same type of data sharing as mentioned in point number 2 of Option 1 (above) so I have same concerns as I already mentioned.

So what should you do?

It depends on your situation.

Option Number 1: If it is really to help you better your ads and optimize your site and conversion then you should opt-in. At this time it is not clear. I would say opt-in for a less strategic site (if you have multiple) and see how it works then you can always opt-out if it is not what you expect. I will of course blog about it in future on how they actually use the data.

Option Number 2: For now, in my opinion, you are ok with sharing your data to use Benchmarking services. You can always opt-out later when Google starts to use this data to power Adwords and Adsense.

User Privacy

Even though Google is making the data anonymous it is only referring to privacy of the site not of the individual visitors. It is up for debate who owns the data, the visitor, the website where data is collected or third party tool like Google Analytics. They are asking your (site owners) permission by asking you to opt-in to data sharing. To ensure Google covers all it bases when (note I did not say IF) they decide to behavioral targeting based on all the data collected they will seek to get user permission too (or I think they should).

Privacy policies are different in different countries so you should comply with local privacy policies before allowing Google to aggregate data collected on your site. It is always a good idea to clearly mention in your sites’ privacy policy how you are allowing 3rd parties to anonymously collect and aggregate the data for Benchmarking and other marketing services.

Comments? Questions?

Move over Google Analytics here comes Yahoo Analytics

I am sure a lot of you heard last week that Yahoo got into the analytics field with purchase of IndexTools. At that time it was not clear if Yahoo will continue selling IndexTools for a fee or will give away the tool for free like Google Analytics and Microsoft Analytics (Gatineau or what ever they are calling it these days).

I speculated, in my blog post, that Yahoo will (or should) give away this tool for free. In my mind the advantage of giving away this tool was clear. IndexTools is superior in functionality to Google Analytics, it is far more advanced and rivals tools like Omniture and Webtrends. A free offering from Yahoo would put them in the driving seat of the web analytics world. This free tool will also help them sway marketing dollars that would have otherwise gone to Google.

Another huge benefit that Yahoo will have is the ability to put their pixels (data collection mechanism) around the web and hence collect data. Which, in turn, will help their Behavioral Targeting efforts, which are currently limited to Yahoo portal only. This is huge!!! and something that might be of interest to both Bassel and Usama of the Strategic Data Solutions group of Yahoo (the group that IndexTools will roll into).

(Sidenote: Both Bassel and Usama were founders of digiMine, the company I used to work for, which rebranded to Revenue Science, one of the leading Behavioral Targeting networks. It could be there opportunity to build a huge Behavioral targeting network which could easily be bigger than Revenue Science.)

In my opinion giving the free tool was the way to go.

Well, this morning Dennis R. Mortensen, COO of IndexTools wrote on his blog that Yahoo will indeed offer IndexTools for free.
He also claims that IndexTools offers 80% of Omnitures functionality. So you get 80% of the functionality for Free.
I am sure executives at Omniture, WebTrends, Google Analytics, MS Analytics are scrambling right now to figure out what this all means to their business.
Let’s just say this for now – It will have an impact.

I also had some speculations about web analytics market consolidations in my last blog post. This move by Yahoo and IndexTools is a huge step toward making my speculations a reality.

Here is what I wrote in my previous blog post:

A free offering from Yahoo will change the Web Analytics landscape. If yahoo is smart they will make index tool available for free as soon as possible. I will replace GA with IndexTool in a heartbeat (as I don’t tie my Adwords to GA).

So what’s next?

Here are few scenarios

Scenario 1

1. Google Analytics, Microsoft Analytics (and some other tools) will not be able to compete with IndexTools free offering.


2. Microsoft will need to step up its offering quite a bit (considering the deal with Yahoo is not happening), they should buy WebTrends. Webtrends is built on MS technology and provides far more functionality than IndexTools (Let’s call it Yahoo Analytics). Which will make Microsoft the leader, Yahoo second and Google third in web analytics capability.


3. Now, Google won’t stand still. They will use their stock power to buy Omniture and replace Google Analytics with Omniture.


4. Which will make Google the leader once again, Microsoft second and Yahoo Third


5. Microsoft then buys Yahoo and it will be down to two Google and Microsoft. We won’t have one clear leader as both will be close.

Scenario 2

1. Google Analytics, Microsoft Analytics (and some other tools) will not be able to compete with IndexTools free offering.


2. Considering Microsoft’s intent to buy Yahoo, Google will spring into action and buy Webtrends and Omniture.


3. Which will make Google the leader once again, Microsoft second and Yahoo Third


4. Microsoft then buys Yahoo and it will be down to two Google and Microsoft. We won’t have one clear leader as both will be close.

Scenario 3:

1. Google Analytics, Microsoft Analytics (and some other tools) will not be able to compete with IndexTools free offering.


2. Microsoft will need to step up its offering quite a bit (considering the deal with Yahoo is not happening), they should buy WebTrends. Webtrends is built on MS technology and provides far more functionality than IndexTools (Let’s call it Yahoo Analytics). Which will make Microsoft the leader, Yahoo second and Google third in web analytics capability.


3. Oracle, which is on the sidelines but one Web analytics company recently, jumps into action and buys Omniture and makes it free.


4. Which will make Oracle the leader once again, Microsoft second and Yahoo Third and Google the fourth.
   
5. Microsoft then buys Yahoo and it will be down to three Oracle, Microsoft and Google.

Some other combinations of the above are also possible. Also, there is a possibility of AOL and some agencies getting into the action but you get the idea that the consolidation will continue.


What do you think?

Web Analytics Industry - Consolidation Continues

Last month I wrote about ZeroDash1 and IndexTools getting into partnership. Few days later we (ZeroDash1) were acquired by Ascentium, a marketing an technology company based in Bellevue, WA.

Now IndexTool has been acquired by Yahoo.

"Yahoo! believes that the ability to generate the most valuable and relevant insights is essential to seizing market opportunities and creating successful campaigns," said Bassel Ojjeh "We expect that the IndexTools' technology platform will provide our customers the opportunity to more quickly uncover and act on these insights, enhancing Yahoo!'s status as a partner of choice in online marketing and the must buy for the world's advertisers."

I am not sure if IndexTools will continue to offer its tool for a fee (as it is today) or become a free webanalytics tool like Google Analytics. I think that Yahoo will take the route of Google Analytics and Microsoft Gatineau and make it a free tool. IndexTool is, however, a better tool in terms of functionality it offers compared to Google and Microsoft’s tool.

A free offering from Yahoo will change the Web Analytics landscape. If yahoo is smart they will make index tool available for free as soon as possible. I will replace GA with IndexTool in a heartbeat (as I don’t tie my Adwords to GA).

So what’s next?

Here are few scenarios

Scenario 1

1. Google Analytics, Microsoft Analytics (and some other tools) will not be able to compete with IndexTools free offering.


2. Microsoft will need to step up its offering quite a bit (considering the deal with Yahoo is not happening), they should buy WebTrends. Webtrends is built on MS technology and provides far more functionality than IndexTools (Let’s call it Yahoo Analytics). Which will make Microsoft the leader, Yahoo second and Google third in web analytics capability.


3. Now, Google won’t stand still. They will use their stock power to buy Omniture and replace Google Analytics with Omniture.


4. Which will make Google the leader once again, Microsoft second and Yahoo Third


5. Microsoft then buys Yahoo and it will be down to two Google and Microsoft. We won’t have one clear leader as both will be close.

Scenario 2

1. Google Analytics, Microsoft Analytics (and some other tools) will not be able to compete with IndexTools free offering.


2. Considering Microsoft’s intent to buy Yahoo, Google will spring into action and buy Webtrends and Omniture.


3. Which will make Google the leader once again, Microsoft second and Yahoo Third


4. Microsoft then buys Yahoo and it will be down to two Google and Microsoft. We won’t have one clear leader as both will be close.

Scenario 3:

1. Google Analytics, Microsoft Analytics (and some other tools) will not be able to compete with IndexTools free offering.


2. Microsoft will need to step up its offering quite a bit (considering the deal with Yahoo is not happening), they should buy WebTrends. Webtrends is built on MS technology and provides far more functionality than IndexTools (Let’s call it Yahoo Analytics). Which will make Microsoft the leader, Yahoo second and Google third in web analytics capability.


3. Oracle, which is on the sidelines but one Web analytics company recently, jumps into action and buys Omniture and makes it free.


4. Which will make Oracle the leader once again, Microsoft second and Yahoo Third and Google the fourth.
   
5. Microsoft then buys Yahoo and it will be down to three Oracle, Microsoft and Google.

Some other combinations of the above are also possible. Also, there is a possibility of AOL and some agencies getting into the action but you get the idea that the consolidation will continue.

If any one of the above scenarios happen then Ian Thomas will be proven right, when he said in 5 years web analytics will be everywhere and all web analytics software will be free. I disagreed with Ian in my response to his prediction, but I also did not deny the possibility of web analytics vendor aggregating the user data across sites and then using that to provide targeted advertising and in return providing the tool for free.

What do you think? Comments?


Side Note: The interesting thing is that IndexTool will become part of Yahoo!'s Strategic Data Solutions. Bassel was one of the co-founders of my ex-company digiMine (which is now called Revenue Science).

Video Analytics by YouTube

YouTube launches analytics for the video providers (user, partners and advertisers). According to Google Blog, this tool (service) called Insight will initially allow video providers statistics such as

• How often videos are viewed in different geographic regions


• How popular a video is relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time


• Data on lifecycle of the videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks

According to YouTube blog,
"We'll be making new features and additional information available fairly quickly -- like a specific breakdown of how viewers discovered the video"

YouTube videos are embedded in several sites and blogs, so it will also be nice to see what sites, blogs etc. are embedded the video on their site and on what pages.
Some bloggers, TV news and news sites are claiming that YouTube will track and show at individual level i.e. show the name, IP of an individual who watched the video. I believe that YouTube has such data (when you consider tying Google Accounts with YouTube) but I do not believe that YouTube will reveal that kind of information in the Video Analytics, as it could result in all sorts of privacy issues.

I expect Google (who owns YouTube) to integrate these services with Google Analytics. Not only will video providers able to see the stats mentioned above in one interface but all see the impact of videos and visitors driven by these videos on their site and hence make better decision for future video productions and promotions.

Thoughts? Comments?

Ad Targeting on Gmail appears to be using more than just Gmail data

There has been a lot of speculation about how Google will use all the data that it collects about visitors to its various services. Last year I blogged about how Google can use data it collects on Gmail, Google Search, Adsense, Adwords, Google Analytics etc. to do Behavioral Targeting and then continued with few more posts on Google and Behavioral Targeting. Google was first denying the whole notion of it getting into Behavioral Targeting but last year they introduced Personalized Search using Web History and then introduced in-session targeting on their Search Engine Result Page (SERP).

Now, it’s Gmail’s turn.

Users of Gmail are used to seeing text ads on the side and top of their Gmail mailbox. These text ads are based on the content of the email that a user is reading or gets. I was surprised when I recently saw an ad that was neither relevant to the emails I get nor relevant to my Gmail profile. It was however relevant to some of the search made in past by me on Google and relevant to me (maybe), which Google could have guessed from my name (maybe).

The ad I saw was from a Travel Company that specializes in tickets to India, and interestingly the ad was in my native language “Hindi”. Yes that’s right, the ad was in “Hindi”. My Gmail account, on which I got this ad, is for my semi-business use and never get any personal emails other than from my wife, who uses SeattleIndian.com email address. But I have never got an email in “Hindi” in this account. My conclusion is that Google pulled my name, Web history from Google Account (that includes Google Searches, none of which resulted in me viewing “Hindi” pages) and SeattleIndian.com email address to conclude that I might be interested in an ad from an Indian Travel Agency. None of my searches or my emails will indicate that I know Hindi so it was purely a speculation by the Google Advertiser or Google to think that I knew Hindi.

Here is the ad that I saw





Have you seen something similar? Comments? Questions?

Behavioral Targeting and Affiliate Marketing

Behavioral Targeting (BT) provides a great opportunity for Affiliate Marketers and Networks to reach right customer and increase the conversion.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is way for advertisers to reach potential customers and only pay when a visitor takes some predefined action. Predefined actions range from a sale to registration. Recently Pay Per Click has also been added to affiliate programs. Generally, the website (publisher) places an advertisements on their site and when a predefined action results by a visitors referred (clicked) by that ad, the advertiser pays the publisher a % or a fixed amount. I won’t go into further details of affiliate marketing but you get the idea.

As you know now that one of the major benefits of Affiliate programs is that an advertiser gets an inventory on publisher’s site without paying anything. Advertiser only pays when a visitor becomes a lead or a customer. This is like sales people on commission only program.

However there is even bigger benefit than just getting free inventory. The ability to put an ad serving (and tracking) code on these affiliate sites (publishers). Just think about how many sites Amazon, eBay, commission junction, linkshare etc. have their codes on. Amazon was the one of the early advertiser who realized the power of Affiliate programs. Google, not matter how you look at it is also a type of affiliate program, in most case advertisers get free inventory and only pay when a click happens (and now Google has pay-per-action program which is true affiliate program).

The widespread tracking code on the internet provides a huge opportunity for affiliate networks and advertisers (like eBay, Amazon) to engage in behavioral targeting and reach potential customer with the right message at the right time.
Let’s take a look at a scenario to further understand how this can work.
A user visits eBay and looks at certain products and bids on a camera but lost the bid. Next day eBay gets another seller who is selling the same camera. How can eBay reach the user who lost the bid? Well one way is they can send her an email (She might not be actively checking my email). Second is tell the about that camera when she come back to eBay (that might be too late). Third is they can use their affiliate site to put that camera offer right in front of her if she happens to visit any of the affiliate site (and there are a lot of them). She has shown interest in the camera so why not use your affiliate code to put the right offer in front of her. The code is right there make use of it. Some might argue this is crossing the privacy line but that is whole another issue to discuss.
Amazon already does similar targeting by its Omakase links but it is not true behavioral targeting. They use the keywords or browsing history which goes back since they day they were born. I see offers from Amazon that are not even relevant to me anymore, they were at one time but Amazon still thinks I am interested even though I have not clicked on those products in years.

Affiliate networks like Commission Junction and Link Share are in great position (eBay uses Commission Junction). They know what kind of sites a visitor (or customer) visits, what kind of products/offers he/she is interested in by looking at their click or purchase behavior. Can’t they just automatically put offer s/products in front of customers?

The way most of the affiliate networks work today is not very efficient for any of the parties involved. They need to step it up a bit. Here are my thoughts on all parties involved how Behavioral Targeting (BT) can help them.

Publishers: A publisher has to decide what advertisers they want to sign up for, this is their guess on what will work. I have spent months trying to figure out what will work for my customers. Also then the link generation process is so difficult. Say a publishers sign up as an affiliate for Resaturant.com (check out SeattleIndian.com, it has restaurant.com banner), now the publisher has to go find the products that are relevant to their customers if they want to target with right banners. In this case maybe it is restaurants in Seattle. It is such a pain that majority of publishers don’t want to deal with it and just put a generic banner. Won’t it be nice if CJ or Restaurant.com in this case was able to put the right offer based on Geography and other browsing behaviors on either CJ network or Restaurant.com site itself?

Customers (visitors): Customers (Visitors) don’t have time, they will only click on ad which will be relevant to them. A generic message from Resturant.com or eBay or Amazon is not enough. Show them a message which will make them click right away. If a customer has already been to Restaurant.com and looked for Indian Restaurants in Seattle and now when the customer is in Seattle (Geo location) surfing on this affiliate site, why show her a generic message? Why not show her offers for Indian Restaurants?

Advertisers: Even if advertisers are getting free inventory now, it is not going to last. Inventory is limited, publishers are going to replace their banner with something that will make them money (AdSense has replaced several affiliates). So grab this opportunity. Put relevant message, gone are the days when generic message would have worked (did they ever worked though). Use the browsing behavior on your site (or a behavioral ad network, your affiliate network will have to offer behavioral targeting soon) to target the right messages.

Affiliate Networks: Why are they still operating using the old model where they make the publisher s guess what products or offers will work for them (Google is following this model too with their pay-per-action model). Why can’t you let publisher put some generic code on their site and then serve ads based on user behaviors? I have seen a lot ads sitting on a publisher site not generating any sales, few clicks, who is benefitting from all this? Not the affiliate network. Not the publisher. Advertiser? May be. Visitor? May be. Now if you had placed a right message (determined from user past behavior) then chances are that all of the parties involved will benefit. It is worth trying. Test it. Use the data you collect, the data from advertisers' site, the data from publishers' site. It is not going to be easy but it is doable. Acquire a behavioral targeting company, use their technology and network too.

Affiliate marketers and networks have a huge opportunity to cash in using Behavioral Targeting. They just have to move fast.

Comments, Questions?

Here are some more posts on Behavioral Targeting.

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Is Google’s Behavioral Targeting Flawed?

By now it is well know that Google uses in-session Behavioral Targeting. Eric Lander of Search Engine Journal points out some interesting issues with Google’s Behavioral Targeting

I can see how Google’s BT can be concerning for some advertisers and consumers. Google Behavioral Targeting (BT) by no means is an advanced one. They just use the current search words with the last search words in the same session to figure out user’s intent and then serve the relevant sponsored links.

However, it raises two questions in my mind.

1. How many times a consumer jumps from one city specific search to another?
   
   If I live in Seattle, most of my searches are in Seattle area. I hardly switch from “Seattle Care Dealer” searches to “Los Angeles (or any other city) lawn care” search. Does anybody have any study that shows how people switch cities in their searches?
   
   If I do a search for a “Seattle car dealer” and then a search for a “lawn care”, am I not the same person who was in interested in “Car dealers”? Then don’t you think showing a car dealer ad while searching for “lawn care” is relevant to me? If you agree then I don’t see where is the issue with Google’s Behavioral Targeting? The whole promise of Behavioral Targeting is to show the write ad/content/offer/product to the user based on their behavior instead of the context (in this case showing a “car dealer” ad even though user is searching “lawn care”).


2. Do consumers (searchers) consider the sponsored links as advertisements or a part of the search result? If they consider these as a part of search results, then yes showing the unrelated results definitely will add to the frustrations consumers’ experience with Search. But if consumers consider them as advertisements more than as a part of search results then, IMHO, it is ok to show out of context ads as long as they are relevant to the consumers. Several studies have shown that Click Through Rate (CTR) on the organic results are far more than CTR on Paid (Sponsored) results indicating that users considers these paid listings more of an advertisements than search results.
   

What do you think? Would you, as an advertiser, want to see your sponsored links show up out of context (content) but relevant to the user? As a consumer, do you consider sponsored links as advertisements or as a part of the search results?

It's a Targeted Targeted Targeted Targeted World

In a recent survey CNET asked AOL, Ask.com, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo about their privacy policies and behavioral targeting. In some cases they asked follow-up questions for clarification.

Here are the results



Source: http://news.com.com/How+search+engines+rate+on+privacy/2100-1029_3-6202068.html

So what did the Search engines say about Behavioral Targeting?

AOL was very open about using Behavioral Targeting. They have been using Revenue Science and recently purchased Revenue Science’s competitor Tacoda.

ASK said they do not use behavioral targeting. I have not paid much attention to ASK so I cannot comment if that is true or not.

ASK said they do not use behavioral targeting. I have not paid attention to ask so cannot comment if that is true or not.
Google said they do not use behavioral targeting. However as I showed you last month, they use same session targeting, I call it behavioral targeting. Their following answers were not clear to me

"CNET: Do you do behavioral targeting, meaning showing ads to users based on their behavior across multiple queries?
Grand: We are committed to protecting user privacy. We also want to provide users with a more rewarding online experience by making the advertising and content users see relevant to them. We believe the targeting capabilities, reporting and analytics we offer today provide advertisers with an excellent ROI and provide a high-quality user experience. Currently, our system incorporates a large number of signals (such as the user's query, the user's location, type of site, content, and the advertiser's landing page) when targeting and ranking ads. We have not focused on demographic targeting to date for targeting ads on search result pages."

Isn’t that what is called behavioral targeting? Demographic is one element and is not the main ingredient for Behavioral Targeting, Behavioral Targeting is based on behavior, demographic provides another criteria to segment the behavior by but is not required. Once again, do not confuse Behavioral Targeting with targeting based on Demographic information. Seems like Google is saying since we do not use Demograohic information we are not doing Behavioral Targeting.

"CNET: We weren't able to figure out your answer to our question asking whether you do behavioral targeting. In other words, if I search for "New York City vacation" in one query and "vacation hotels" in a second query a moment later, does Google.com evaluate the two responses, figure out that I'm probably looking for New York City hotels, and display ads appropriately?
Grand (Google): No.
Well, I showed some examples of it last month, check out my article titled "Ad Targeting on Google Search Engine".

MSN: Representative of MSN said that they offer Behavioral Targeting through AdCenter. He indicated that they will begin offering behavioral ad targeting on third-party sites. He also said that MSN uses some demographic data from services such as Hotmail and Windows Live for targeting but uses in non-identifiable fashion."

Yahoo, was very open about using behavioral targeting. According to yahoo
"Per our privacy policy, when a user is logged into a Yahoo product or service, they are not anonymous to us. Logged-in users may receive customized ads based on general demographic categories such as geo-location, gender, and/or age range."

What does this all mean?

Well, Behavioral Targeting has arrived, you will be targeted (and already are weather you know it or not). Yahoo, MSN and AOL are doing it. Google, even if they are denying it, is already targeting you. ASK will follow suite soon. "It's a Targeted Targeted Targeted Targeted World".

Ad Targeting on Google Search Engine

I wrote about Google and Behavioral Targeting extensively on this blog. Recently I found some examples of Targeting on Google Search engine and would like to share those with you.
Last Sunday I was looking at Keywords Report on Google Analytics for http://www.usaindian.net/. I saw a key phrase “bay area desi car buy” which drove few users to the site (Desi” is a term used by east Indians (India) to refer to each other). I got curious and went to Google to see where this site ranked on Google for this key phrase. As I was researching the keywords on Google, I noticed 3 types of paid ad targeting on Google Search Engine
1. Geo Targeting – Which we know that user allows it advertisers to do
2. In Session search targeting (I made up this term)
3. Combination of Geo and In-Session search targeting


I am going to show some screen shots that will show you these targeting in action

1. Geo Targeting – I searched for “bay area car buy” (notice, I removed the word “desi” from the original query as it was not relevant to what I am going to show”.)
   
   
   
   1. Got paid ad related to my query “bay area car buy”
   
   
   2. I live in Seattle area and got an ad related to my geo-location as well.
   
   
   
   
   


2. In-session Targeting - After seeing the above results I got curious about what other kind of targeting Google is doing so I changed my query to search for “Chicago Car Buy” and found
   
   
   
   1. A paid ads related my search query “Chicago Car Buy”.
   
   
   2. I also got paid ads related to my previous query “bay area car buy”.
   
   
   
   
   I confirmed that this was indeed happening by doing yet another search “Atlanta car buy”
   
   


3. Combination of Geo and In-Session targeting - After my previous search on “Atlanta car buy” I went back to search again for “bay area car buy” and found
   
   1. An ad related to my query “bay area Car buy”
   
   
   2. An Ad related to my previous query “Atlanta Car buy”
   
   
   3. An ad related to my geo location “Seattle”
   
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Advertisements need to continue increasing personalization

According to Sean Ammirati at Read/Write Web this statement was made at Supernova conference by Sheryl Sandberg , Google's Global VP of Sales and Operations while giving a presentation entitled What's next for advertising?.

Sean Ammirati Says
“This [statement by Sheryl] was surprising to me, given that I don't believe Google has publicly announced any plans to incorporate behavioral targeting into their ad delivery system.”

Those who have been reading my blog know that I have been speculating about Google entering the Behavioral Targeting field. This statement by Sheryl reaffirms my belief.

Why do I think Behavioral Targeting makes sense over any other form of personalization?

Let’s start with the type of data that can power Online Personalization. There are 3 main form of data collection that can be used for personalization:

1. Explicit User/Visitor preferences – This is what a users tells a website about their preferences, interests etc and the site serves them appropriate experience, products, content, ads etc.
Example of this are
my.yahoo.com – you customize what you want and how you want it.

2. User/Visitor Demographic data - This form of personalization takes users Demographic data and serves up appropriate product, content, ads etc. recommendations based on those demographics. This could be a combination of explicit and implicit (location) form of data collection. Most of the data however is entered by users e.g. age, gender, income etc.

3. Behavioral Targeting – This form of personalization does not require any explicit user data. In this form of personalization Users’ intent and preferences are inferred from their browsing behavior via an anonymous cookie and not tied to any PII (Personally Identifiable Information) data. Based on users’ behavior marketers put the users in one or more of the predefined segments and then serve content, products or ad appropriate for the segments that the visitor falls in. Publishers/Networks/Advertisers don’t know who the visitor is all they know that cookie ABC123 is somebody who might be in the market for a new car. Read Behavioral Targeting 101 for more details on how behavioral targeting works.


1. The problem with “Explicit User Preference” is that it is mostly dependent on choices that a site provides to the visitors. If those choices are not indicative of what users really likes then it will give the wrong indication of visitors’ preferences. Say the site only provides me to choose Red, Green and Yellow colors, while my favorites is Blue then I will choose one of the given colors even though it does not show my true preference. Many times the visitors, in order to get through the registration form quickly, will fill whatever choice they see first. Expecting them to enter their preferences so that you can serve them appropriate Ads is not going to work. Preferences also change with time but visitors don’t go back and change their preferences unless there is a very compelling reason to do so. Getting an appropriate ad is not a very compelling reason. This form of explicit data collection border on the line of PII data and hence can suffer backlash from privacy groups.

2. The problem with “User/Visitor Demographic Data” is that a lot of visitor do not provide correct demographic information. It also suffers a lot of the same issues as “Explicit User Preferences”. User’s Demographic also borders on the line of PII data.

Behavioral Targeting on the other hand does not rely on visitors’ explicit information. As visitors preferences change so will their onsite behavior, say if was looking for a sports car about a year ago and now my situation is different and I am looking for a SUV, it will be reflected by my browsing behavior. I don’t have to go change my explicit preferences that I entered about a year ago (no waste of my time); my behavioral data will show that. Absence of PII makes it even more preferred way of personalization of Ads.

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cookies

Today there was an article on ZDNET blog about how Google/Doublelclick, Yahoo/RightMedia and Microsoft/aQuantive deals is about cookies more than anything else.

I agree with the author of this article that these acquisition are not about ad serving technology but about user data and reach. I have written in my past article about how these acquisitions by these three giants were a huge steps towards building behavioral targeting networks.

The rich set of user data that these companies will be able to gather by these acquisitions is very valuable. All of these companies had cash to hire smart people and build the ad serving technology for a fraction of what they paid for acquisitions. So it is not about technology. What they could not have done on their own was the reach and rich user data. The only way to gather that kind of information was to acquire the companies which have those.

So why do they need that user data? One of the issues with advertising is that by placing contextual ads advertisers waste lots of impression because they reach a lot of people who are not even interested in their offers or products. This rich user data (tied via cookie) will provide Google, Microsoft and Yahoo understanding of which users could potentially be interested in offers/products of an advertiser. Historical user data will allow them to understand what kind of users have responded to what kind of offers/products in past. The new acquisition will also allow them to reach all those user which were earlier not in their network plus provide them more data. This will allow them to target the ads to right set of users, users who are most likely to click on an ad and convert (buy, register etc.). By generating higher click-thorough and conversion they can command premium from advertisers. Everybody benefits from this, publishers can sell their inventory for a premium, advertisers will reach right set of customers and consumers will get the offers and products they care about. The three giant (Google, Microsoft and Yahoo) make money by providing this rich data and hence taking their cut from publishers (in many cases they will also act as publishers).

Some might argue that cookie deletion will cause a problem in aggregating the past user histories. I agree that cookie deletion is an issue but all these companies have some way for user to login or provide their real information (gmail, hotmail, yahoo mail, google checkout, toolbars, messengers etc.) which can help them tie all the cookies together. I will blog about this more in my future article.

Another issue raised by this article was privacy. I have written a lot about this in past, here is link to my past post which talks about this issue Behavioral Targeting: Audience Of One.

Behavioral Targeting will become a norm (it already is) and these three giants will own (already do) a significant portion of that user data that will make it possible.

Here are my other articles on Behavioral Targeting

Behavioral Targeting: Audience of One

This morning Washington past had an article titled “Web Ads with An Audience of One” discussing the growing use of Behavioral Targeting.

I have been writing about
Behavioral Targeting since I started this blog and have been predicting growth of behavioral targeting. MSFT/aQuantive deal did not come a s a surprise to me, I expected it. Behavioral Targeting is going to be very prevalent especially now when all three MSFT, Google and Yahoo have built their capabilities are building them.

This article resurfaces the privacy concerns, as I wrote in my article Google Doubleclick Deal concerns Privacy Advocates the best way to deal with privacy is to move from opt-out to opt-in model.

…."I believe that if consumers are provided proper education (I will write about consumer benefits in one of my future posts) than they can infect benefit from Behavioral Targeting. It will be a win-win situation for all the parties involved. Proper education and disclosures by advertisers, publishers and networks will ease the concerns regarding Behavioral Targeting. Consumers have the right to opt out of Behavioral Targeting but what is lacking is proper education on how to do so. The networks currently opt-in users by default; however, in my opinion the proper process should be opt-out by default and opt-in if user chooses to opt-in, just like we do for emails and newsletters. This process will move the burden from users to the advertisers, publishers and networks.

In short run this could result in a lower reach for BT providers. But if the benefits to consumers are properly stated then most of the consumers will be willing to participate. If you (network or advertiser) tell a consumer that he/she does not need to go looking for deals or offers of products/services that he/she is in the market for, these deals/offers will be provided to him/her based on her online behavior no matter where in the network she is in, I think consumer will love it. If a consumer knows the process and she knows that she is willingly participating in the BT, the click-through rate on the ads will be higher too. Why force users into Behavioral Targeting and raise privacy concerns when you can offer them what they want (when they want) and make them your raving fans.

This article gives an example from DrivePM where a user who visits a hotel chain site but does not complete the booking can be reached at later point in time but this time the user gets a 10% off coupon as an incentive to complete the booking. Knowing the benefit won’t users allow networks to track them? I am sure those who see the value in this 10% will surely do. As I said above give users what they want and they will give you what you want. If users know that they can have offers tailored to their needs by just letting a network track them, chances are very good that users will let them do it. Users sign up for grocery card rewards program just to get few cents off then how is it different online? Let users decide what and how they want you to track.

One another note: I am puzzled by the quote from Curt Viebranz of Tacoda “…….. we’re literally collecting 10 Billion behaviors a day”. In my article titled Calculating Behaviors on your Site I questioned a similar quote from Revenue Science. Can somebody from Tacoda or Revenue Science please clarify how you calculate behaviors or quit using such meaningless stats.

Future of small Behavioral Targeting Networks is grim

With Google, MSFT and Yahoo buying Doubleclick, Aquantive and RightMedia receptively and more acquisitions coming in near future, seems like these giants will own the online advertising space. Most of the acquired or acquirers have behavioral targeting capabilities and together they broaden their reach and strengthen their capabilities. (Check out my other posts on the same subject
Behavioral Targeting Moves by Yahoo and Google and Google and Behavioral Targeting) With such large networks in the market does it make sense to have standalone behavioral ad networks such as Revenue Science Tacoda? These networks don’t even have their own ad serving system they just provide the technology to identify segments and then rely on other ad servers like double click or atlas to serve behaviorally targeted ads. Google/Docublick, Yahoo/RightMedia and Microsoft/Aquantive all have or are building behavioral targeting capabilities (technology) plus they have the reach.

I believe Behavioral Targeting will become important but advertisers are long ways out from just relying on behavioral targeting. Behavioral Targeting is one part of the whole targeting mix. With Google, Yahoo and MSFT with their vast reach further strengthened by these acquisition do not need smaller behavioral targeting networks (with limited reach) when they can do it own their own. Advertisers/Agencies also don’t need to worry about several smaller networks when they can use one of the exiting ones such as Google, Yahoo or MSFT.

What do you think?

Behavioral Targeting Moves by Yahoo and Google

A recent article by Brandweek, talks about how Yahoo is betting big on Behavioral Targeting.
Yahoo has been testing its BT like targeting since 2003 or so. I am from India but has been living in US for years, I signed up for my yahoo account in US. Sometime around 2003 when I logged out of my yahoo email, yahoo served me an ad related to an Indian company. I don’t remember explicitly telling yahoo that I was from India. I asked my co-worker (sitting next to me and who was not of Indian origin) to browse to the same location but she did not get the same ad. My thinking at that time was that that they were somehow reading the content of my emails (just like gmail), since I didn’t remember using yahoo search engine to find that content related to India, but I am not 100% sure though) and serving ads based on it.

According to this Brandweek article, critics say behavioral targeting is an invasion of privacy. Jeffrey Chester, CDD founder and executive director said he has no problem with behavioral targeting if advertisers disclose to consumers that they are tracking information. "They need to fully disclose and get permission, but they're afraid to do it," Chester said. I am not a critic of BT but I agree with Chester as I wrote in my posting on Google and Doubleclick privacy concerns.
Yahoo! rep Dina Freeman said the company protects its users' privacy. "It's anonymous. It's never tied to your name," she said. "Consumers in general are coming around to the fact that they like the relevancy."

I agree with the above statement but let’s disclose this to consumers so that everybody can feel comfortable.

Google on the other hand has been saying that it won't consider behavioral targeting. Even though Google is resisting Behavioral Targeting so far but a lot of people (including me) are predicting that Google will soon get into Behavioral Targeting. According to Brandweek article, however, now Google is saying they won’t consider behavioral targeting without getting consumers' approval. So they are thinking about it too if they get consumer approval. Richard Holden, director of product management at Google says "We're not opposed to it in principle, if it means showing fewer ads but ones that are more relevant." Yes, Behavioral Targeting is about showing relevant ads, so when can we expect first BT Targeted ads on Google network?