• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, August 19, 2009

I zeroed in on page 231 of "Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales" by Didit CEO and cofounder Kevin Lee, and coauthor Catherine Seda to read chapter 14, "Extending Search with Behavior."

Talking about behavioral targeting and retargeting reminds me a little of stepping into a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream store. There are as many BT definitions as there are ice cream flavors. And Cold Stone Creamery creates the "ultimate consumer experience" by allowing patrons to design their own personalized ice cream flavor with toppings that range from Oreo cookie crumbs to strawberry and blueberries.

BT companies serve up ads online to provide each consumer a tailor-made experience based on past clicks and downloads. Lee describes that experience in Chapter 14.

If you have written and published a book, you'll know how difficult it is to include the most relevant and current content. Publishing deadlines typically come long before the book hits the shelf. But Chapter 14 does a good job of first defining behavioral targeting, and then describing the most recent information about BT on search engines Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Screen shots accompany the descriptions to give you a visual representation.

Lee writes: "Until 2009, Google had deployed only a limited implementation of behavioral targeting in its search network (that is, Google properties, not Google's content network). In March of 2009, however, it announced a more ambitious plan to serve behaviorally targeted advertising across the ad-serving networks it acquired through its DoubleClick acquisition and also though its AdSense network."

Aside from the update on the search engines, the chapter eases the reader into BT by providing a list of vendors and their services.

Although this is not explained in the book, companies have begun to tie offline data from credit cards and debit cards provided by retail stores and banks into BT platforms.