News flash: almost 80 percent of companies fail to use behavioral targeting properly. Instead, about 90 percent of businesses choose to compete based on customer experience.

Don’t want to make the same behavioral marketing mistake? Want to test behavioral ads, it really pays to know your target audience. Here’s how to spice up your ads with behavioral targeting!

All About Behavioral Targeting Advertising

Raise your hand if you already know what behavioral targeting advertising is. For the rest of us, regular advertising can seem like a hit-or-miss, arbitrary situation. Sometimes, crafting messages carefully can fail without a clear reason.

Perhaps it’s because your customers feel like they can’t connect with your product in a way that will make them want to purchase and engage with it. Typically, your less than stellar results with advertising comes from marketers making ads that don’t address the user’s particular desires and interests. Also, you might be reaching out to the wrong target audience in the first place as well.

What can you possibly do to avoid this from happening to you?

In a world of advanced tracking technologies in data, marketing randomly should be banished to the past, particularly on the Internet. Not only have randomized advertising methods been a tremendous failure, but they’ve also wasted a ton of money in the past.

For those of you who spent time advertising online, you probably know how useful it is to read data to target the right audience for the best conversion rate. In this article, you want everything you need to know about what behavioral targeting is, what the benefits of it are, and how it works.

In case you’re still scratching your head, here’s the breakdown.

In a nutshell, behavioral marketing is an advertising technique that uses browser information to bolster its marketing campaigns. This common method gathers information from a bunch of different sources about your future customer’s shopping and browsing habits.

Using this information, special ads are created to target future user’s interests and habits, which is then shown to them we have their web browser. Of course, the Internet user will naturally be attracted to these ads that are designed just for them!

Benefits of Behavioral Targeting Ads

Let’s face it: despite the fact that digital marketing is based on data, the benefits of behavioral targeting reach much further than boring math calculations.

As a matter of fact, centering advertising campaigns around a behavioral target audience benefits the consumers and the advertisers at the same time. Take a look at some of the perks that behavioral marketing has to offer advertisers:

• Increased user engagement
• Higher ad click-through rates
• Increased conversion rates

When it comes to increasing user engagement, behavioral marketing takes the cake. That’s because it gives advertisers the ability to access consumer information. In spite of this fact, the advertising companies still have to build a sense of trust and interest with their viewers.

Otherwise, their consumers will be much less willing to engage with their products. Once this is established through the brand’s website, the user can access other parts of the site, building up clickability and activity for targeted marketing further on down the road.

On top of that, creating a personal advertisement that captures the user’s needs and likes is a way more effective tool than generic banner advertisements that don’t lineup with their past purchasing and browsing behaviors. What’s the real deal about increased conversion rates?

We’re glad that you asked.

Occasionally, certain ads reach their target audience with a mass appeal factor, raising the odds that the viewer will try to find out more info or make a purchase on their site. Using the methods of behavioral marketing, businesses can view their sales increases and repeat clients, boosting their overall profit margins.

On the other hand, the target audience also benefits from behavioral targeting, in the following ways:

• A customized advertising experience
• A more effective process for shopping online
• Alerts and reminders for a brand-new inventory

How can you beat that?

How to Spice Up Ads With Behavioral Targeting

So, you want to spice up your ads with behavioral targeting but don’t know how. Have no fear, you’re really not alone. Fortunately for you, we’ve done all of the hard work and advance.

For starters, you should know that behavioral advertising is all about tracking future consumers’ online behavior. The next step is to gather their data using something called cookies.

Here’s how the whole cookie tracking process works.

First of all, every time that a visitor checks out a new site or makes an account, a cookie is deposited on their device. This cookie is either temporarily stored or permanently stored on their hard drive. If it is stored on the person’s hard drive permanently, then the cookie will even work when the user closes out their Internet browser.

Meanwhile, those that were stored temporarily on the browser will get deleted afterward. In case you didn’t know, cookies are also gathered when a visitor clicks on a new page and a new ad. Not to mention that the cookie tracks that the amount of time that they spend on a certain site as well.

Using this behavioral data, advertisers can easily track the visitor’s search and shopping habits online. If you’ve ever worried about why your ad isn’t reaching the right audience, then cookies are going to be your best friend from now on.

Moving forward, behavioral targeting is all about creating groups of consumers too.

With the profiles and patterns created, businesses and categorize visitors into several different groups of target audiences. When these lines are drawn, a site that centers around behavioral marketing will be aware of the dislikes, likes, interests, and purchasing trends of each segmented target audience.

Lastly, behavioral targeting will put your specialized ad in front of the right audience every time!

Behavioral Targeting and Data Management

Admit it: almost every single business has multiple data points on the clientele.

While some of them are collecting this data on purpose, others are doing this on accident. Regardless of how the data is collected, it’s only helpful if you know how to read it to get the results that you desire. For instance, marketers need to implement info properly in order to avoid making irrelevant content.

To figure out how this works, you’ve got to understand what a data management platform is and how it can help you gain information about your target audience. In addition, data management platforms can also help you to analyze it, store, and use it to increase your ad campaign success rate.

For the uninitiated, data management platforms are used to organize and collect data from first–party, second–party, and third-party target audiences. You might be shocked to find out that these essential data points are gathered from the user when they are on their phones, on their web browsers, or even when they’re offline. As the foundation of marketing, data management platform let companies gain special insights about their clientele.

Why is this important?

Fair question. Even though it’s easy to get a bunch of information about potential consumers, it’s much harder to understand it. That’s why you need data management platforms to cover and set them all out for you. The result is this – understanding what you’re seeing is going to be a no-brainer.

After the data management platform does what it does best, it sends user data points to face platforms such as ad exchanges, supply-side platforms, and demand-side platforms to be utilized for the following activities:

• Targeted marketing
• Personalized ads
• Customized content

With so many amazing benefits, it’d be crazy not to use data management platforms right now!

What Info Does Data Management Gather?

As we discussed above, data management platforms can also be described as a digital pipeline between the advertiser and their target audience.

Good news: this is the best way that marketers can connect to their consumers whenever and wherever they need to.

The best part about a data management platform is that it can help you to reach certain goals too.

Here’s the kicker. You might be surprised to find out that data management platform also gathers the following types of information from potential consumers:

• Mobile browsing data
• Geographic location
• Registration or subscription entries

Check this out. Using cookies that are stored on laptops, tablets, and smartphones, advertisers are using valuable data to track future consumer’s behavioral patterns. Simply with their everyday behavior, Internet users give data about their search, navigation, and communication habits.

Think about it this way.

The amount of time that people spend on smartphones is a wonderful way to see what they are spending their time and money on. Did you know that advertisers can track a user’s geographic locations as well?

Yes, you read that right.

Whenever someone logs onto a Wi-Fi network, data management platforms can use the device’s Internet protocol address to see where their devices located on the map. Then, marketers can use this Internet protocol address to see where a potential user visits their site, which could tell them where they might live, work, or play.

Let’s talk about registration or subscription entries.

Normally, this information is gained whenever the client signs onto the website and creates a user account or buys a subscription plan. This is also given to other data management platform to estimate purchase locations, times, and need so that it can display the right message to the right concern at the right time.

Not creepy at all!

What Behavior Does Targeting Track?

Question: what behavior does targeting track, anyway?

Here is your answer. To put it simply, data management platforms can decode user information to get a bigger picture of their ZIP Codes, contact info, demographics, and more.

Consider this. Businesses that focus on behavioral targeting usually know how to use data management platforms to get the inside scoop on their target audience. However, this only works if companies pay special attention to the user’s online interactions, such as finishing a web search.

For example, whenever someone looks at a lot of different retail products without making a purchase, chances are that they will be shown a ton of ads related to that specific product.

For those of you are still feeling cookies, take a glance at some of the most common behavioral patterns are tracked by data management platforms:

• Frequently visited pages
• Website viewing times
• Clicked link and ads

Let’s dive into the frequently visited pages thing for a minute.

Within a particular network, data measure platforms start their search by looking at the website that a potential user is browsing on. It doesn’t matter if they looked at it once, several times, on a daily basis.

This information normally reveals the user’s behavior and interest trends. That way, the data management platform can see why you stopped at their site at all. Data manager platforms also track a user’s webpage viewing times, which boils down to the amount of time that they spend on a website.

Why is that?

So that the user’s interest level can be easily gauged. Even though a user might click on a link at first, they may end up scanning the page for a little time before leaving the site, showing that it did not pique their interest. Final step: tracking clicked links and ads!

Target Your Audience With Behavioral Targeting!

Want to target your audience with behavioral targeting?

Learn how to use, read, and understand behavioral marketing with our helpful guide today. From defining behavioral targeting advertising to talking about the benefits of using it, we’ve got everything you need to know what to get the job done.

Not sure what kind of information is gathered by data management platforms and cookies? We’ve totally got your back. Now that you are well-informed, go out there and get your behavioral targeting on.

We promise that you won’t regret it!

Need a hand in the behavioral ads department? Give us a call to schedule a free consultation now!