• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, December 2, 2008

Do you ever get the feeling you're being watched?

1. "While most see behavioral targeting as a great way to improve conversion rates at the bottom of the funnel, it's also a great way to optimize your spend at the top of the funnel by excluding impressions that leak outside your target audience," says JJ Richards, general manager of platform services for Microsoft Advertising.

2. "Most advertisers have their own definitions and segmentations, but are frustrated when trying to match those to static industry offerings," Richards says. "Some advertisers don't know their audience, so predictive targeting and engagement mapping will work backwards from a conversion to help discover them."

3. "2009 will become the year behavioral targeting makes money - lots of money - for lobbyists and lawyers," says Zach Britton, Front Porch founder and CEO.

4. "Consumers at airports, hotels and other locations have already shown they gladly choose ad-supported free Internet access when it is available," Britton says. "With the recent approval of nationwide free wireless Internet, we'll see this model grow, and behavioral targeting will likely become an important component."

5. Let's make one thing clear: "Privacy issues will become top priority for the industry and will be addressed by a coordinated self-regulation to provide users with transparency, notification and control around the practice and benefits of behavioral marketing," says Bob Dillon, vice president of product marketing for Yahoo Advertising Marketplaces Group.

6. "Increased use of common metrics like ROI and ROAS will give advertisers a very clear understanding of the differences in behavioral target offerings," Dillon says. "Performance will become the standard, not whether a provider uses robust predictive modeling based on extensive data, done by companies like Yahoo, compared with simple targeting based on users visiting a cluster of pages."

7. "Advertisers will begin to use behavioral targeting to refine their ad messages, not just to purchase audiences," Dillon says. "Broad demographic buys will be dynamically served with tens or hundreds of different messages tailored to user behaviors."

8. "Expect to see Google's AdSense and behavioral targeting combined across casual games," says Justin Townsend, CEO and cofounder of IGA Worldwide. "It won't lend itself - yet - to console games."

9. Many new "behavioral networks" will form, allowing marketers to target people based on their expressed interests. "Social networks, in particular, are ripe with behavioral information," says Chris Hansen, vice president of performance marketing at 360i.

10. Dynamic ad messaging will become more prevalent, serving up images and content in a banner built on each user's behavior. "It is difficult and expensive to create a banner for every targeted behavior, so we will see a more cost-effective means of messaging," Hansen says.