Most marketers have heard about real-time bidding, but what about real-time behavioral targeting (BT)? While some brands want to downplay the fact they use targeting services, Rocket Fuel executives continue to tout what Founder and CEO George John calls "real-time" BT.

The promise of personalization in digital media is one of those stories I seem to have been writing again and again for the decade and a half I now have been covering these platforms. From the early and failed push platforms of the late '90s to MyYahoo to the many, many attempts to leverage behavioral tracking for customized Web site experiences, we keep looking for ways to craft media that is precisely targeted to user interests.

DG, which delivers video ads through a digital network, wanted to expand into online advertising. So, last week it acquired online ad firm MediaMind, formally Eyeblaster, for $414 million in cash. Gal Trifon, former MediaMind CEO, will remain at DG as chief digital officer. Trifon told MediaPost the combined companies -- DG and MediaMind -- stand a better chance of successfully supporting targeted ads based on consumer behavior across traditional and online media, compared with two separate businesses.

Here is one worth noting. In the massive new report on the media economy released last week, the Federal Communications Commission recommends that targeted advertising may actually have positive social, cultural and political benefits. In fact, the FCC argues that the U.S. government itself could be an important buyer of this inventory.

Experian Marketing Services, and Kantar Media, which provides Internet, TV and radio audience measurement in 59 countries worldwide, announced Wednesday the integration of aggregated demographic data with anonymous audience viewing behavior data. The service is available through Kantar's DIRECTView service.

If the online ad industry is old enough to have developed its own tiresome clichés, then surely "But can a banner ad make you cry?" has to be one of them. The lack of creativity, engagement and impact in online advertising relative to other media has been presumed in this industry since long before whack-a-mole banners. But if digital advertising is notoriously weak at registering human emotion, content still does have that capacity. Certain material is likely to trigger a range of responses in us, from pride to sympathy, ambition to anger. Still, even if advertisers themselves have trouble …

Google, Microsoft, Bing, and others expect June 8, 2011 (today), also known as IPv6 Day, to go off without a hitch. This is the day more than 400 companies will test the ability to send packets of information and data signals across Web sites and nodes, seamlessly. And IPv6 will change behavioral targeting in ways most won't or can't talk about -- because they really don't know.

I imagine that the new research on the effectiveness of personalized retargeting from MIT Sloan School of Management Prof. Catherine Tucker and London Business School Prof. Anja Lambrecht will be widely discussed for months to come. As MediaPost's Tanya Irwin reported yesterday, the new research shows that retargeting users with highly specific and personalized product information after they leave a retail site may be counterproductive.

Nearly one month into his new job, eXelate SVP of Analytics Kevin is putting together a plan to embed analytics into eXelate services. To do that he will need to hire a staff and build out an infrastructure. The next step will be to turn the plan into a product roadmap. "It was a great opportunity to build out a strong analytics group for a company sitting on a mass of amazing data," he said. "As an analyst, data is my thing."