Digital Media News

Have you ever wondered how banner ads seem to know what you are thinking? That you were coveting that new pair of Jimmy Choo’s, or that vacation in the Bahamas? Or, have you been curious about how that dynamic banner ad knew to tell you about the new coffee shop that has opened at the end of your street?

Every time you surf the Internet, advanced data mining operations are cataloging your interests so that businesses can serve you personalized advertisements. The practice is known as “Interest-Based” or “Behavioral Advertising (or behavioral targeting,” and it enables advertisers to speak directly to their target audience with timely and relevant messages.

What is behavioral advertising?

As opposed to direct marketing, where advertisers send the same message to everyone,behavioral advertising takes online information and uses it to tailor the message to the user.

Programmatic advertising - which is the purchase of media inventory based on audience-focused factors - has recently established itself as one of the most popular topics in the world of digital marketing. Within the B2B community, programmatic ad buying has taken center stage for companies looking to get ahead of the trends, to innovate and optimize how they reach out to and connect with potential customers and clients.

The simplest way to define behavioral targeting, is as a type of marketing technique that has been used online for a number of years now, as a way of allowing businesses to reach out to their target audience. As the name alone is capable of suggesting, behavioral targeting can allow for entrepreneurs to match their sales tactics to the common Internet activity and purchasing behavior shown by their prospective buyers. In other words, behavioral targeting allows marketers to create the advertisements and promotional opportunities that their audience is actually seeking.

Because behavioral targeting not only monitors user activity, but also takes the interests of any specific consumer into account, it has generated a great deal of appreciation within the media market. In fact, behavioral targeting isn't only preferred by business owners looking to increase their traffic - it's a preferable option to Internet users too. The statistics speak for themselves.

Following, we'll address three of the best benefits of behavioral targeting, so you can decide whether it's the right move for your business.

Sometimes knowing the right decisions to make as a media buyer can be difficult, but implementing these five basic strategies will drive any campaign towards success. 

As a professional media buyer, you’re responsible for purchasing, negotiating, and monitoring the various types of advertising space and air-time a client uses when establishing their brand presence. The idea is to give your customers the platform that they need to reach the largest number of people within the market that is most relevant to them for the lowest possible cost. Sometimes this will mean working throughout a wide range of different platforms from magazines and posters, to online videos and social media campaigns. In other circumstances, the job may require you to buckle-down and focus on a single platform for an extended period of time. But what do you do when you’re forced to grapple with an especially challenging campaign – or, as I like to say, when you come down with a case of the media buying blues?

Some marketers are hesitant to embrace programmatic buying because of some common misconceptions about it. Here are three myths about programmatic buying and the truth behind them.

As we move into the digital age, machines are taking on a much bigger role in online ad buying. In fact, according to a new study by Magna Global, (the ad buying arm of Interpublic Group), programmatic buying, in which marketers use computerized systems to target users based on consumer data and Web browsing histories, is expected to jump 52 percent by the end of this year, to $21 billion globally.

This impressive growth is being fueled by a desire from marketers to cut transaction costs, improve efficiency, and see a stronger return on investment of ad spend.

Programmatic is a major departure from the traditional online ad buying process, in which digital ads are bought and sold by human media buyers and salespeople. Programmatic buying automates the processes that humans have historically had to deal with, like sending insertion orders to publishers and dealing with ad tags.