Display ads are generally targeted towards users based on their current context (contextual targeting), past behavior (behavioral targeting), or a combination of the two.
Already, he notes, BT (short for behavioraltargeting) spending has been growing 20% a year or more for years and is forecast by eMarketer to keep growing at that clip at least through 2014.
As recently as 2009 it was still trendy to doubt whether advertising or commerce could thrive on social platforms or whether users would rebel at intrusions into their personal conversations and creepy behavioraltargeting.
In this case, technology needs to be partnered with sophisticated behavioraltargeting through mathematical models that enable you to predict the most compelling content and offers based on known insights and data points about each visitor.
That is known as "contextual" targeting, and many advertisers consider it less effective than "behavioral" targeting, which identifies specific users and their interests.
Behavioral marketing, the practice of targeting people with advertising pitches based on their tracked online activities, has become a central way for advertisers to reach the audiences they want to reach across a splintered media landscape.