• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 18, 2009

Behavioral targeting, loosely defined as targeting an online ad to consumers based on their online behavior, is really not a new concept. Traditional marketers at big box retailers, grocery stores and banks have relied on the tactic for years. it's called targeting consumers with ads through direct mail. So what's the big deal?

Similar to religion, sometimes people just don't want to talk about BT. It often feels like pulling teeth to get executives to express their point of view about BT platforms. Yet how will marketers understand and learn about the technology if no one wants to talk about it? I suppose you can hash out the details behind closed doors, so it takes another 10 years before the technology catches on.

Take John Nardone, chairman and CEO of [x+1], for example. Reluctant to discuss the BT feature in the company's recently released media management platform Media+1,he says "It's one of those terms I stay away from because it's often defined as a creepy technology that follows people around the Internet."

BT is only a piece of [x+1]'s technology platform Media+1 released today, but it's an important piece, one that lets marketers customize and build targeted audience segments. More importantly, the target audience segment can tie to the information in a cookie, so the optimization engine can evaluate the data for a given client or desired set of outcomes whether or not the segment gets included in the model as part of the definition for a target audience.

But Nardone doesn't want Media+1 "pigeon-holed" as a BT platform because it provides a very narrow view of the technology's capabilities. I agree, but would really like to open the hood of some of these platforms and crawl inside to give them a spin.

So, as I listened to Nardone quickly run through Media+1's features, I felt almost as if I had experienced a spiritual cleansing. He sounded as if he were a rabbi reading off the list of sins during the High Holy Days.

He says the platform provides the ability to integrate third-party data and attach it to individual cookies. The platform provides the ability to synchronize cookies across multiple data sources. The platform provides the ability to bid in real time on exchanges. The platform provides the ability to do attribution modeling and reporting. The platform provides the ability to filter content. The platform provides the ability to produce custom targeting dimensions transportable to other users.

Amen.