I vantaggi del Behavioral Targeting

Come si evince dai miei precedenti post, sono un fautore del costo-qualità come atteggiamento che i marketer dovrebbero iniziare ad avere verso le campagne pubblicitarie, in contrapposizione al costo-contatto.

E' di oggi un approfondimento riguardante il behavioral targeting riportato via eMarketer

Is Behavioral Targeting Better?

All marketers know that targeting is good. But now on the Web they must also decide what kind of targeting to use, behavioral or contextual?

According to a new "Eye Tracking" study, conducted by Next Century Media, and sponsored by Tacoda, a provider of behaviorally-targeted online advertising solutions, behavioral ads win hands down.
The study showed that behavioral targeting generated an average of 17% more ad looks than contextual targeting. Furthermore, after the first exposure, the advantage actually increased — "skyrocketed," to use the language of the release — to 54%.
That means that regardless of context, ads unrelated to a page's content generated interest even on repeat viewing, Tacoda CEO Dave Morgan told MediaPost. "Behavioral advertising does not seem to suffer the same banner burnout when you present these ads out of context."
In other words, the more you show a behavioral targeted ad, the more it gets noticed. That is not always, or even usually, the case with advertising.
Results like these would catch any marketer's eye. But as Advertising Age wrote, "While it's not surprising the study, conducted by Next Century Media, an interactive TV and online ad research firm, would come out in favor of its backer's main business, the results were nonetheless impressive in how strongly they favor behavior-targeted ads."
Quite impressive — and absolutely contradictory to long-held media practices, which hold that you put ads in editorial environments where they "fit." It has been a tenet of magazine advertising for decades.
When asked how behavioral targeting could generate more looks than contextual targeting Bill Harvey, Next Century Media CEO, replied, "It is probably a combination of more relevancy and less clutter."
He elaborated, "It could be that there are just too many ads for the same product category attacking the user's eye in contextual targeting, causing the user to avoid looking at any of them. Even though they are on that site researching a planned purchase, they might try to stay focused on the editorial content during that process, resisting the bombardment of similar ad messages. On the other hand, when in the market for a product, and finding an ad for that product in a completely unrelated site, the user might react to the surprise of that unexpected event by looking at the ad.
"We call these two hypotheses 'Clamor' and 'Surprise' respectively, and will be studying both of them more in future studies."
For another comparison, at the end of 2004 ad:tech and MarketingSherpa, partnered to survey online marketers and look at what worked for them. They found that behavioral targeting lost ground with marketers, dropping from third to fourth in the 'Great' performers list, and getting a 36% rating for strong performance, down from 41% in the 2004 survey. It's the first time that the tactic fell in the ratings.

So, is behavioral targeting better? Right now, there are only a few numbers, and a lot of speculation. Before answering that question, and toppling decades of best advertising practices, smart marketers would be well advised to wait for more research results before deciding.