What is behavioral targeting?
Simply put, behavioral targeting is an online advertising technique that involves using user data to ensure the ads and offers each user sees is as relevant as possible to them. Its goal is to help advertisers improve the effectiveness of their campaigns and get more conversions per dollar they spend.
If you want to learn more about this topic, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: How do it work?
Behavioral targeting works by first collecting data about a user—such as what they search for, what sites they visit, and what products and services they buy—to find out what they are interested in and then using that data to serve them online ads that are perfectly tailored to their specific preferences.
As we have seen earlier, this helps advertisers boost the effectiveness of their campaigns. But that is not all that they do. It also makes the life of users easier by automatically putting products and services that they might need (or simply want) in front of them, eliminating the need for manually searching for anything.
Question #2: How do I do behavioral targeting?
The good news is that you do not have to do the data collection yourself to do behavioral targeting. Online advertising platforms like Facebook and Google Ads have already done that for you. All you have to do is create your ad, use your chosen platform’s targeting features, and hit publish. The platform will take care of ensuring your ad is shown to the right people at the right time.
Question #3: What can I do with behavioral targeting?
There are two major things you can do with behavioral targeting: tailored advertising and retargeting.
The first, tailor advertising, is what we have seen in the previous section. It allows you to create a custom audience for your ads using your chosen advertising platform’s targeting tools.
Say you sell online guitar lessons for complete beginners. Google Ads, for instance, would allow you to target people who use search keywords such as:
- How to play guitar
- Beginner guitar lessons
- Guitar tutor
- Online guitar lessons
- Learn guitar fast
Want to show your ads on YouTube? You can also use Google Ads for that. With it, you can either target people who use certain keywords, watch certain videos, follow certain channels, or a combination of all three.
But that is not all. The platform also allows you to further narrow your targeting by age, location, language spoken, civil status, gender, and in some areas, even income.
Retargeting, on the other hand, uses user data to show users the same ad (or variations of the same ad) across different platforms in case they do not buy after the first one or two times they have encountered the ad. But you can also use it to show specific ads to users who perform a specific action, such as:
- Click on one of your ads
- Visit your website
- Send you an inquiry via email or social media
- Make a purchase
- Share one of your social media posts
Question #4: Examples
The most prevalent example of behavioral targeting is the ads you see on social media. The more you post, the more data the social media platform you are using is able to collect about you, allowing them to serve you more relevant ads.
Think back to the last time you clicked on a social media ad without actually buying anything. Did you get an ad for the same product or service just minutes later—and then even more relevant offers from other companies? That is behavioral targeting at work.
But you can also see it on platforms that do content recommendations such as YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify. They use your past behavior (i.e., what videos you watched and what songs you listened to) to build a list of relevant recommendations for you. The goal is to not only keep you on the platform longer but also keep you coming back for more.