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How does it work?
Behavioural targeting anonymously follows someone’s interests, patterns and behaviours so you can speak to
them knowing they want to be spoken to, which means less campaign wastage. This can be done by monitoring
a number of consumer actions including:
> Search terms entered
> Editorial content viewed
> Ads clicked on
> Channels or micro sites visited
You can then weight each person according to their relevancy to a particular industry category and their exact position within the buying process. This can be worked out by the frequency and how recently they have shown an interest in a specific product. For example, if someone visits Yahoo! Travel and searches for flights or travel insurance this will increase their rating for the travel category. Naturally they will also fall into the finance and insurance category and their subsequent actions will determine how relevant they are to financial advertisers. |
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Yahoo! and behavioural targeting
Over 600 major advertisers, including P&G, Volkswagen, Capital One, Fidelity and JVC use Yahoo! behavioural targeting.
So what can Yahoo! offer advertisers?
> Yahoo! has a huge audience (19.5 million unique users, or 66% of UK users*) which means advertisers can target
the heaviest consumers of content, at precise points of the buying cycle
> Brands can benefit from the large number of channels on the Yahoo! network which attract users with a wide spectrum of interests, therefore increasing targeting opportunities
> Unlike most competitors, Yahoo! manages behavioural targeting in house. This means the Yahoo! tool is fine tuned to a specific category needs and is consequently more responsive
> By targeting an audience, rather than contextual areas, campaigns have a sustained presence with the user. Plus, the advertiser benefits by avoiding high demand or sold out channels
> By incorporating all relevant user actions into the
targeting, and not just basing targeting on brand websites visited, campaign wastage is reduced. For instance, users who left brand sites after making a deliberate decision not to buy would not be targeted
* Source: ComScore, November 2006.
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Case Study
Take Brand X. It’s one of the big four UK high street banks who used the Yahoo! behavioural targeting tool to reach users who were looking to open a current account. Case study Using the Yahoo! network as a baseline (100%), contextual targeting via the Yahoo! Finance category resulted in an 86% increase on click through rates for the campaign. However, when behavioural targeting was used to identify the users on the Yahoo! network who were interested in a current account, click through rates were up by 137% on baseline measurements. This clearly demonstrates that behavioural targeting substantially improves the efficiency and effectiveness of an online campaign.
Frequently asked Questions
1. How do I know where the consumer is in the buying process?
Yahoo! behavioural targeting gives each category a unique “product purchase cycle” to ensure it reaches consumers for the correct duration while they are in market for that product. These cycles are based on a rigorous investigation of a consumer’s actions in the buying process. The frequency and intensity of these actions change the closer the consumer gets towards the point of purchase, allowing distinct periods of brand consolidation and purchase intent to be identified. Behavioural targeting allows ads to be strategically delivered to these exact points of the process.
2. My marketing communications are for instantaneous purchases, is behavioural targeting still relevant for these campaigns?
Yes. Although many models treat all categories as having the same buying process cycle, the Yahoo! product takes into account different lengths of cycle and targets the intensity of actions accordingly. For example, categories with short cycles are frequently focused on price, so keyword searches may be heavily weighted. Conversely for big-ticket items, which may require a lot of research, page views may be a more important measure of intensity.
3. Someone looking to buy the latest technology is likely to have different traits to someone taking out a mortgage. How does the targeting differentiate between these characters?
Yahoo! tracks historical behaviour – who clicked on ads in this category in the past and what actions led to this click? Each user is then scored on how likely they are to respond to ads in this category. The ads are then delivered through behavioural targeting, which will only reach those judged to be in market and ready to respond to thatspecific product category.
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