A year ago, we started the OMMA Behavioral conference series wondering if there were enough behavioral targeting hot topics to fill a full day's program, let alone serve a substantial audience. Overflow crowds and great feedback "OMMA BT" 1 and 2 put to rest any concern. A conference room is too small, a day too short, to fit all the people and issues at the heart of BT now. And so as we prep for the third show, this time in San Francisco (July 21, Hotel Nikko), I once again move beyond the event itself to solicit contributions from our …

The once radical premise of behaviorally targeted ad placement, using behavioral profiles to "reach the right prospect at the right time with the right ad," is now largely common wisdom. Marketers now have confidence behaviorally targeted ads can far outdrive untargeted ads to their Web sites. As Brent Hieggelke, vice president of strategic marketing at Omniture, explains, however, most marketers still leave this newfound wisdom behind once visitors enter their Web site door.

In the latest of his regular reports on behavioral marketing, eMarketer senior analyst Dave Hallerman projects a significant spike in BT ad spending in 2012. When we asked Dave to walk us through his numbers, video emerged as a key driver for revenue growth. So we took a small detour through Dave's reasoning.

The core mission of behavioral marketing is to deepen marketers' knowledge of who consumers are and what they want. In practice, however, most marketers so far have used behavioral platforms primarily for placing their own brand and product promotions. In so doing, Hal Wurster, managing director, Automotive, at Compete, explains below, they are closing themselves off from critical behavioral intelligence about how consumers see their brand and product in comparison to rivals.

As more sites identify and profile users coming through their front door, retailers and publishers gain the ability to optimize the site experience itself for various audiences. Magnify360, which works with Inuit, HSBC and Citrix, uses a combination of behavioral targeting, predictive modeling, and real-time multivariate testing to lift conversion rates. CEO Olivier Chaine walked us through a recent case involving the ContinentalWarranty extended warranty retailer, where the automated system produced some customizations that were as effective as they were counterintuitive.

Behavioral targeting has largely been geared to increasing the odds that ads will be served and seen by the right prospects. So far, so good. Unfortunately, as Ian Swanson, CEO of Sometrics, explains below, too often behavioral targeters think their job ends when an ad is served. With social networks in particular, he says, that's precisely where the real work begins.

Online media buying can be lot like the stereotype of men driving. Advertisers like to use a map, spreadsheets, analytics, just about any technology to get to their destination, but often they are loathe to stop and ask a real live human being for directions. Among the first sites to implement behavioral targeting technologies in the early 2000s, About.com is as experienced in the BT field as any publisher. Senior Vice President of Sales Sheryl Goldstein recently deployed a new and very human way of monitoring user behavior online -- simply ask the Guides what their peeps are doing. Just …

The language and the guiding frameworks used by online and offline marketers -- one structured around transactional data, the other steeped in DMAs and demographics -- have until now remained distinct and largely incomprehensible to one another. In a world where online/offline fusion is no longer speculation but daily fact, traditional and digital teams need to learn to speak a common language, as Scott Knoll, senior vice president of display, Datran Media, explains.