• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 9, 2011

Marketing strategies built on consumer behavior requires data to support targeting decisions. But a study led by Lauren Freedman and e-commerce consultancy e-tailing group reveals just 8% of the 110 retail marketers surveyed plan to spend more on retargeting and behavioral targeting services during the holiday season and into 2012.

Companies think they understand the importance of data, but when retailers who participated in the study sponsored by Bronto Software were asked what they would focus on if they could do just one thing to elevate their marketing strategy, only 13% said consumer behavior insights, customer relationship management and data.

After assessing how to tweak available strategies and tactics, 25% of marketers said they would significantly increase the percent of their overall marketing budget for retargeting and behavioral marketing in the coming year, while 44% said they would slightly increase the budget.

Online advertising execs becoming increasingly savvy with data will look for other ways to identify consumer behavior. For instance, Kantar Media, which provides Internet, TV and radio audience measurement, and GroupM, said Monday they would integrate Return Path Data (RPD) with other data sets in order to better define consumer behavior from media consumption through product use.

GroupM will start by licensing data on Hispanic audiences from Kantar’s DirecTView service, overlaying it with purchase data from Kantar Shopcom, which runs a database containing information from 231 million consumers across 270 CPG, retail, travel, lodging and services categories.

The strategy targets Spanish-speaking audiences. GroupM will license the data from the Kantar Media DIRECTView service to determine the behavior of audiences viewing Hispanic programming. The company will overlay it with purchase data from Kantar Shopcom. It will enable the companies to identify the specific audience through commercials, channels, and performance like "tune-away behavior," product placement measurement; contextual ad performance, and return on investment.