With 160 million Internet-enabled cell phones already in circulation today, the small screen is clearly ready for prime-time advertising. One of the biggest hurdles advertisers have faced till now, however, has been how to effectively target and deliver ads to that huge audience. Tom Burgess, CEO of Third Screen Media, explains how the age of targeting is finally dawning for mobile.

It was just a matter of time before the new wave of social networks realized they were sitting on a trove of user habits and profiles ripe for behavioral targeting.

Is behavioral targeting a "disruptive technology," one that dramatically change the online advertising status quo? Or is it an innovation whose basic impact will be to make the powers-that-be simply more powerful?

As many agencies continue merely to dabble and test, test and dabble in behavioral targeting, others are amassing case studies and moving to the next level of BT campaigning.

The topic of behavioral targeting has become the red-hot center of attention in online ad circles. The shift from conventional demographics to more finely granular modes of segmentation is far deeper and wider than that, however. Indeed, as a recent conversation with Simmons Research Co-CEO Bill Engler makes clear, even the medium of television, where demographics has ruled for generations, may now be on the threshold of subtly but profoundly undergoing its own paradigm shift to new targeting models.

Behavioral targeting is about to become part of consumers' and advertisers' search experience, but how does that change the red-hot SEM market?

As part of its effort to help establish better practices among software makers, CNET is on the advisory committee of Truste's Trusted Download program, which aims to give users peace-of-mind by evaluating adware and trackware applications for certification. Behavioral Insider talked with David Gregory, senior producer at CNET's Download.com.

Are Americans too concerned with Web privacy issues? Could the virtual world of games be a testing territory for emerging advertising techniques and technologies? Ilya Vedrashko thinks so. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student moved here from Russia to study all things media and advertising at MIT's Comparative Media Studies Program.

In November, Web privacy watchdog Truste announced criteria for its latest effort, the Trusted Download Program, through which Truste will evaluate downloadable adware and trackware applications for certification. Behavioral Insider asked Truste's director of product development, Colin O'Malley, how Truste's certification programs could affect the behavioral marketing industry.

Al DiGuido, CEO of e-mail marketing technology provider Bigfoot Interactive, believes that before e-mail marketers can think about applying behavioral targeting technologies to their campaigns, they'll need to focus on employing the consumer data they already have more efficiently across multiple channels.