The mantra of behavioral targeting has been getting the right message to the right person at the right time. Though much remains to be done, clearly some progress has been made on matching the right messaging to the right people. The next frontier, however, as Ali Mirian, product manager of publisher solutions for 24/7 Real Media explains, is making it happen at the right time.

I don't like making New Year's predictions on a digital platform--mainly because it is way too easy for readers to dig up the archives and hold me to them a year later. A safer way to look ahead to 2007 in behavioral marketing is to appropriate some of the field's own terminology and "target" the trends worth watching.

A while ago, behavioral targeting was still something of an esoteric novelty. Now, knowledge of the basic techniques and different flavors of BT has progressed dramatically. For most advertisers, the fundamental question of whether to do behavioral targeting has already been answered. Yet 2007 begins with far more questions than answers about the technique's emerging role and scope.