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Behavioral targeting: Unlocking the power of machine-learning marketing

Provided by YieldDay

Behavioral targeting is a technique that uses data to better understand and engage with customers. By analyzing online behavior and interests, companies can create personalized experiences that drive better results and increased ROI. In this article, we’ll explore the basics of behavioral targeting and how companies are using this technology to improve their digital marketing campaigns.

What is behavioral targeting?

Behavioral targeting is a marketing technique that uses data to understand and predict consumer behavior. It analyzes patterns of online behavior, including site visits, purchases and interactions, to build a profile of individual users. This information is then used to deliver targeted content and advertisements that are more relevant and engaging.

Behavioral targeting can be used in a variety of different ways, including interest-based advertising, personalized product recommendations and site personalization. It can be applied to different types of online experiences, such as email, search, social media and display advertising.

How does behavioral targeting work?

Behavioral targeting works by collecting and analyzing data about consumer behavior. This data is typically collected through the use of cookies, which are small text files that are stored on a user’s device. Cookies can be used to track website visits, purchase history and other online behaviors.

Once the data is collected, it is analyzed to identify patterns and trends. This information is then used to create user profiles that can be used to deliver targeted content and advertisements. For example, if a consumer visits a travel website and searches for information about a specific destination, they may receive ads for hotels and flights to that destination in the future.

One major problem exists: The use of cookies is becoming more and more limited because of Google’s announcement that they will no longer pass this information through the Chrome browser. Companies are already noticing a slow deprecation of their cookie-tracking abilities. Spoiler alert! There is a solution for this so please keep reading.

Benefits of behavioral targeting

Behavioral targeting offers many benefits for marketers, including:

  • Increased relevance: By delivering targeted content and advertisements, behavioral targeting helps ensure that consumers receive messages that are relevant and engaging. This can result in higher conversion rates, improved brand engagement and increased ROI.
  • Better customer insights: Behavioral targeting provides companies with valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences. This information can be used to inform product development, marketing strategies and other business decisions.
  • Increased engagement: By delivering personalized experiences, behavioral targeting helps companies build stronger relationships with their customers. This can result in increased loyalty and engagement, which can translate into long-term success.

Challenges of behavioral targeting

While behavioral targeting offers many benefits, it is not without its challenges. Some of the most significant challenges include:

  • Privacy concerns: Traditional behavioral targeting involves the collection and analysis of personal data, which raises concerns about privacy and security. Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of these issues and may be hesitant to share their data with companies.
  • Complex implementation: Typical behavioral targeting requires sophisticated technology and data analysis skills, which can make it difficult for companies to implement.
  • Regulation: Privacy regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, have been introduced to protect consumer data and control the use of cookies. Companies must be compliant with these regulations when implementing behavioral targeting.
  • Ad blockers: The rise of ad blockers is a significant challenge for behavioral targeting. Ad blockers can block the collection of data and prevent the delivery of targeted advertisements, which can reduce the effectiveness of behavioral targeting.
  • Google Chrome: This browser will eventually stop collecting and passing all cookies.

Using anonymous first-party data to improve ROI on marketing campaigns

One solution to the challenges of behavioral targeting is the use of anonymous first-party data. Anonymous first-party data is data that is collected directly from a company’s customers and is not linked to personally identifiable information. This type of data can be used to improve the accuracy and relevance of behavioral targeting without raising privacy concerns.

Anonymous first-party data examples include website user actions such as:

  • Clicks
  • Scrolling
  • Mouseover
  • Time on page
  • Video watch percentage

These anonymous user actions by themselves are not very helpful. However, when you know the specific pattern of these user actions in relation to your business goals, this becomes highly useful for the creation of new audiences. There is a certain combination of user actions that define your complete customer journey. The complete customer journey is what leads to online purchases or lead generation form fills for your business.

With the right tool, this level of detail can be synced directly into the ad platforms easily. Once Google, Facebook and other ad platforms receive these signals as events, they can make new audiences for retargeting and prospecting. This capability brings tremendous opportunity for higher Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

Summary

Businesses must adjust their digital marketing campaigns because of market factors impacting the ad platforms. The use of a tool like Yield Day will harness the anonymous first-party data (user actions, conversion events) and segment your website visitors into highly accurate audiences based on behavior in relation to the purchase or form-fill goals.

By only spending your ad budget on the specific audiences that are likely to convert into your goals, your ROI dramatically increases. Even more, these user actions can be scored and synced into Facebook and Google as custom events. These events become Lookalike and Similar audiences respectively in these ad platforms, thus allowing for prospecting campaigns to bring more new customers.

The use of anonymous behavior targeting is still the strongest technique for increasing conversion rates and decreasing ad costs.