• by Masha Geller , June 20, 2003

While contextual targeting is all the rage right now, thanks to search, I'm betting the next hot topic of industry-wide debate will be navigation behavior targeting.

It's a fairly safe bet, considering that a recent campaign by Advance Internet's Cleveland.com using TACODA System's Audience Management System, showed that online ads delivered to audience segments defined by their navigational behavior had response rates 333% better than ads delivered into a contextual environment alone.

According to an official announcement released this morning, Cleveland.com ran a mix of text links, tiles and banners with a consistent message across its entire site on behalf of a local luxury auto dealership. The site offered good coverage in contextually-relevant areas such as automotive classified, but demand for this inventory from other advertisers exceeded supply and the advertiser's need. To expand reach, dealer banner ads were targeted to TACODA-produced audience segments of people who had recently read automotive classifieds, but who had navigated outside the auto environment such as the home page and news section, targeting auto buyers.

All of the creative was identical no matter where it was placed or to whom it was served, and the ads performed 333% better than the same ads served to all visitors.

In this test, AMS merged registration data from over half the people who saw the campaign with data on who had recently read automotive classifieds. Ads targeted back to that audience segment significantly outperformed content-targeted ads even though the audience-targeted ads ran across all sections of the site, not just in the automotive area.

Bottom line? Tacoda CEO Dave Morgan says that as publishers begin to merge their user data and segment their audiences, advertisers will see more value from their campaigns. "Publishers will be able to deliver powerful behaviorally driven campaigns in addition to the contextual campaigns that they sell now. It is a win-win for everyone."