Merging Behavioral Targeting and Contextual Advertising

Finally, someone has discovered a way to use behavioral targeting and contextual advertising together. By keeping anonymous profiles, advertising networks are able to match stored anonymous profiles, including clickthrough and ad preferences, with current visitors.

If the behavior of a visitor is very similar to an anonymous profile in the system, the ad network can serve advertisements similar to the ones the in which the anonymous user showed the most interest (using click-through rates or top impressions).

For unique visitors, the ad network adjusts advertising based on the preferences of the visitor. If the visitor displays a preference for content-based advertisements, the next site the user visits within the ad network will serve similar advertisements.

Tags: behavioral targeting, contextual advertising, anonymous profiles, advertising, ad network