Most initial discussion about behavioral targeting is based on the assumption that data -- and more specifically, data crunching technologies -- are what drive BT e-mail campaigns. While this is true enough on its face, the deeper issue is aligning customer-centric and ideally customer derived data with well understood goals, explains Arthur Sweetser, vice president of marketing at e-mail optimization firm e-Dialog.

As adware firms discovered long ago, getting client software on targets' computers may be the best way to track their behavior and deliver ads that are most relevant to the ways they actually work online and offline. But as consumers themselves also made clear long ago, the terms of the adware deal are less than appealing. Zango CEO Keith Smith explains how the company is dealing with this problem. Zango is installing client-side ad-serving software and toolbars on PCs -- but all parts of the process have to be fully visible, and the exchange of value substantial.

As standalone entities, each of the key emerging targeting methodologies, demographic (which tells you WHO consumers are), behavioral (which tells you WHAT they like) and contextual (which tells you WHERE they are) each have signal strengths and weaknesses. The challenge, as Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Specific Media, outlines below, is to fit each of these three Ws together, making the targeting whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Almost a year after adding behavioral targeting to its own mix, the Jumpstart vertical ad network for the auto industry decided the market needed additional education in the technology. More precisely, auto advertisers needed a bit of clarification in a confusing marketplace, explains Joe Kyriakoza, vice president of product strategy. Jumpstart's new WhatisBT.com Web site offers auto media buyers a crib sheet on the format, basic definitions, explanations of the technology and a rundown of how the various types of BT relate to auto marketing. We asked Kyriakoza what Jumpstart itself has learned in the past year about client attitudes …

Behavioral targeting has been described most definitively as moving the needle in advertising from the page to the user. Julian Steinberg, vice president of operations and strategy at Inform Technology, cautions against setting behavioral and contextual apart from one another. In fact, he suggests, deeper understanding of consumer behavior begins with deeper understanding of the page.

You could say that Claria is on its best behavior. After years of controversy surrounding its adware solutions and the old Gator brand, the company started aiming its behavioral tracking engine at content, and this week brings its PersonalWeb (My.PersonalWeb.com) engine out of beta. CEO Scott Eagle explains how the company hopes to become a personalization platform for publishers, brands and even emerging media.

The promise of online advertising has been to minimize, if not eliminate, the waste and inefficiencies that have always plagued offline advertising. The fact remains, however, that the vast majority of click-throughs are for all practical purposes "lost" the moment a prospective customer, failing to convert, leaves the site. Knotice CEO Brian Deegan argues that behavioral data can and must be leveraged not only to get customers to a site (or to re-target them with ads at other sites) but to improve the odds they'll convert once they re-visit.

While BT networks in the U.S. continue to grow in order to bring greater scale to the technology, European online advertising is more fragmented. Targeting services provider WunderLoop licenses BT technology to some of the largest ISPs on the continent, including AOL Germany, FreeNet and T-Online. Its new plan for bringing the necessary scale to behavioral campaigns is not a network but a brokerage. WunderLoop Connect is a self-service exchange for publishers and advertisers crafting BT campaigns. Chairman Michael Kleindl explains how a BT stock exchange works.

As curiosity and excitement about behavioral targeting continue to build, the natural temptation among publishers and networks is to sell it (and for advertisers to avidly buy it) at a high premium. This temptation, general manager of ValueClick Dave Yovanno explains, needs to be tempered by reality. The value of BT, he reminds us, needs to be judged in the context of how it relates to overall Web site or network optimization.

As we saw recently with ActiveAthlete, content verticals can access a depth of profiling information that typically eludes a larger BT network. SilverCarrot is an eight-year-old performance marketing company that uses robust content at lifestyle sites like Recipe4Living.com and 40 e-letters to capture 50,000 to 70,000 new registrants a day in the 25- to 5-year-old female segment. But as CEO Allan Levy explains, once you get a member into the system, your database engine can learn and respond to a stunning range of behaviors and responses to different stimuli.