• by Lynn Russo , August 24, 2006

Behavioral targeting has long been an effective way for online advertisers to deliver the right message to the right person. Now companies can have the same targeting ability on their own sites, with "on-site" behavioral targeting marketed by UK-based Touch Clarity.

The firm hired Brent Hieggelke, formerly of WebTrends, as its new CMO. Hieggelke will lead the company's branding and positioning strategies, demand-generation efforts, and analyst and PR initiatives. The firm opened a Boston office and hired a sales team earlier this year.

With traditional behavioral targeting solutions, Hieggelke explains, "You would work with them if you want to drive traffic to your site in the first place. We get involved once that traffic is at your site."

Touch Clarity takes over some of the high-value real estate to "try to get more engagement, more conversions, and more relevance by delivering the best piece of content to each individual visitor," Hieggelke says. For hsbc.co.uk, for instance, the firm controls the flow of content into the large top box and the three lower boxes. "And the targeting gets better over time. It builds a [non-personally identifiable] profile of your clicks and remembers that."