We often talk about consumers being "in control," but we rarely see instances of consumers actually at the controls. When a user gets an offer within the site walls at LeverageCard.com, she can tap a button for an explanation of why she was targeted (because of demographics, psychographics, etc. in her profile) and even tell the site how important this brand and product category are to her. Jennifer Mathe, COO and founder, Leverage Inc., calls it "transparent targeting."

Behavioral profiling has made dramatic leaps forward in ever more granularly segmenting consumers by interest, psychographic and other criteria. Re-messaging has ever more successfully brought behavioral targeting into real time. Yet aligning the historical understanding of a consumer's interests with understanding of their immediate intent remains a key challenge for online marketing, as Toffer Winslow, executive vice president of sales & marketing at ChoiceStream, explains.

Once again this week, the issue of personal privacy and online ad targeting vaulted from the realm of trade chatter into national headlines. A pending bill in the New York State Assembly would put legal restrictions on the collection and use of personal data.

Particular social networks may come and go in popularity. The buzz about social media may ebb and flow as well. But one thing most marketers agree on is that the phenomenon of user-generated media is here to stay. The still unanswered question for marketers, however, is how to adapt meaningfully to it. The first step in answering that question, Adam Shlachter, Mediaedge:cia senior partner, and group director of MEC Interaction, explains, is to lose the (still deeply ingrained) notion that UGM is just traditional media on steroids, calling only for yet more intrusive and intensive applications of media and targeting …

Traditionally, Web analytics of on-site behavior and email metrics have peacefully co-existed in separate silos. Once a message gets its audience to a site, many email marketers believe their work is done. Stefan Pollard, director of email marketing best practices, and Dan Miller, manager of professional services, both of Lyris, Inc. argue for a real marriage of the two disciplines.

For most online marketers the goal of "Web 2.0" has been to create Web sites that attract and immerse visitors, prompting their maximum engagement with a rich variety of interactive content. In their single-minded pursuit of driving traffic, however, many marketers have failed to address a more fundamental goal: customizing and adapting their content to the personal needs of consumers, as Olivier Chaine, CEO of Magnify 360, explains.

Not surprisingly, NASA.gov has a staggering amount of information for students, space enthusiasts and plain old Capt. Kirk wannabes like us. With 25 million unique visitors last year across 600 million page views, the site's relaunch in December was a major undertaking. Brian Dunbar, Internet Services Manager, NASA, worked with eTouch system and its managing principal, public services sector, Eashwer Srinivason. In order to build tag clouds and more audience-driven search results, they relied on the Baynote system of using crowd behavior to improve relevance. Here, Dunbar and Srinivason discuss how a site as vast as the cosmos itself is …

All leads, as any good marketer knows, are not alike. The challenge of lead generation online is not just leads but quality leads, leads that have a high likelihood of translating not only into single conversions but into regular customers. Targeting for quality leads entails moving beyond generic product category targeting and adapting behavioral methodology to lead generation, Brad Powers, CEO of Active Response, explains.