The more aggressively marketers "bid for relevancy" by leveraging ever more pinpoint modalities of micro-targeting, be it via behavioral and other flavors, the more imperative it becomes to actively deliver on the promise of relevancy, with truly personalized messaging. Yet, as Calvin Lui, President and CEO of Tumri, explains, it's precisely in the serving of creative that advertising has fallen short, dashing much of the potential of enhanced targeting.

All media and ad platforms ended 2008 trying to make the best case for their efficiency and worthiness in an age of tightening budgets. No one knows yet where the budgets ultimately will shrink and move, but there have been no shortage of theories. Among behavioral practitioners, targeting and efficiency have been the constant cry. In hard times, marketers can't squander a penny, and behavioral segmentation reduces the waste. Doesn't it? Or so goes the theory. As 2009 ad budgets start to flow, we asked some of our favorite contacts for a quick spot check on how behavioral and data-driven …

A few years ago online marketers began to realize en masse that much of the money they were reinvesting in getting consumers to click through to their Web sites was being wasted due to a lack of post-click optimization strategy. Though many marketers have addressed that gap by optimizing their "outbound communications," few have addressed or even acknowledged another blind spot: lack of responsiveness to inbound email communications from the customers they've already "converted," as Sabrina Parsons, CEO of Palo Alto Software, explains.

In a settlement last month with the Federal Trade Commission, Sony BMG Music agreed to pay $1 million in fines for collecting data from children under 13 at music fan sites without the permission of their parents. According to privacy and digital media lawyers Andrew Lustigman, principal, The Lustigman Firm, and Jonathan Ezor, Lustigman counsel and law professor at the Touro Law Center, Sony BMG's violations were clear and instructive. We asked both men to reflect on the implications of this settlement for all publishers.