Open AdExchange and Behavioural Marketing on the Web

Behavioral targeting (BT) is an advertising methodology in which an advertiser’s pitch is shown to users based on the sites they visit and/or what the user does on those sites.

A network or publisher creates behavioral segments based on where the user has gone and/or what they have done on various web pages. These are typically broad based descriptions like “Travel Shoppers” or “Auto Enthusiasts”, but they can also be very specific to an advertiser like “Users who put items in their shopping cart, but did not check out”. Another example is a segment based on users who have searched for an advertiser’s company name or product name. Behavioural advertising, I would contend will eventually merge with neural advertising to eliminate the notion of intrusive, irrelevant content. Next step will be the total syncronization of behaviour, context and role in the field of commercial online marketing. Open AdExchange,  http://openadex.com/beta/,  is the first attempt to woo quality publishers to share content in an open behavioural network and is currently under beta test in Denmark. It will be exciting to watch the performance of this vehicle of relevancy in the coming months.