We were positioned right by the Online advertising theatre which we were also sponsoring, and quite often the queues to get in went way past our stand. Lots of people couldn’t get into sessions because they were so busy – but fret not! If you missed anything then you can get all of the content here. There were some great speaker sessions, especially (even if I do say so myself) Mediaplex’s Donal Kane talking about  ’The Importance of ad serving’ and ValueClick Media’s Richard Sharp talking about the new wave of behavioural targeting (very apt given all the major, mainstream coverage of it in the last few days).

Another one I would recommend is Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy who has to be one of the industry’s best speakers, he never disappoints.

Imagine combining a huge critical mass of consumer online experiences with the most advanced behavioural targeting technology. Then, add the ability to target precise interest segments across our  ad network……..

 If I’ve confused you, let me explain a little bit more in plain English: We anonymously place users into segments based on their actions and likelihood to click or convert in the future. When a user shows signs of being in the market for something that you want to advertise, we will show them your ad. With the market flooded with behavioural targeting solutions, this may not sound exciting, but I can assure you it is different:

 Profiles: In a nutshell we segment the audience in a much more detailed way. Other networks use technologies which deal with much broader brushstrokes and can only segment their audience in a limited way. Also, these technologies also only look at past behaviours and can’t predict future actions.

 Predicting: Our algorithm learns from past experiences and builds up knowledge or buying lifecycles for all product categories. So, if a user has been browsing on a number of motoring websites our technology will be able to decide whether or not the user is a car enthusiast or whether they are in the market to buy a car and only serve ads to likely buyers.  The image below represents a rough idea of buying time for cars, mobile phones and broadband. Once these times have been exceeded the assumption will be made that the user is not in market and we won’t waste your budget by continuing to advertise to them.

Data: The key to the success of this technology is to collect data at each point along the path to conversion from interest to purchase (see diagram below) so that our algorithm can use it to make the most accurate predictions on likely buyers. That is why being part of ValueClick is so important.

So, what does this mean for advertisers? Essentially, they give us what they want to sell and we will target those most likely to buy – not through broad ‘finger in the air’ guestimates, but by complex calculations. In beta tests one client experienced a 298% lift in conversion rates over an optimised control group.

For publishers it means that there will be more relevant advertising to your site users.

I know that Behavioural Targeting is a much-used phrase which means different things depending on who says it. There is a very interesting article on iMedia Connection wriiten by Joshua Koran, VP of Targeting and Optimisation at ValueClick Media which explains all the different types of BT here. 

We are really excited about this as a business, because of its potential to shake up some traditional marketing methods.  

Mike Soper, ValueClick Media