• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, July 23, 2007

As we go into tomorrow's Behavioral Marketing Forum here in New York, eMarketer is estimating that in 2008 spending on behaviorally targeted advertising will hit $1 billion, almost doubling this year's estimated $575 million. BT has arrived, but many in the industry as still trying to figure out what behavioral is and where it fits in their marketing mix.

In making the first independent conference on the topic we felt obligated to set some foundations for the field. And so we came at the state of BT from the three main links in the value chain, buyer, publisher, and vendor.

Tomorrow morning we will have discrete panels of each group discussing what form BT takes in their product mix. I am looking forward especially to Denise Zimmerman's "Grilling the Vendors," where we will have the CEOs of most of the major behavioral vendors all on stage at once responding to a media planner's questions as well as the issue that agencies and publishers raised earlier in the morning. By early afternoon, I am hoping everyone will have a firmer sense of where and what behavioral marketing is and where it is now.

By the way, if you have any last minute questions you want asked of the CEOs, please email me at popeyesmith-at-comcast.net and I will pass them along to Denise. Our privacy panel at day's end will have a new issue to address. Microsoft and Ask.com just called for industry standards regarding how companies handle our most sensitive behaviors, search histories, as well as personal information? Is this a ploy or a principle on the part of the also-ran search engines? Share This