Pop culture freaks, grad-students of the 90s and wiseasses everywhere will recall the satirical creation of the late last century, "Church of the SubGenius." This book and eventual Internet comical cult was designed as one of those deliberately crafted pop culture nonsense "cults" that its fans liked to pretend they understood. For the first time in a long time, "SubGenius" popped into my head as I perused the new personalization and content discovery features in Apple iTunes 9.0 and my iPhone. "SubGenius," I said to myself as I saw the weird recommendations it provided for new mobile applications as well …

BrightRoll just unveiled a program to target consumers with banner and streaming ads based on their behavior across the Web.

What a difference a summer makes in the arena of digital privacy. After years of hand-wringing, heel digging, and denials that a problem existed at all, the online advertising industry is now starting to work through tangible proposals for handling consumer and regulators' concerns about data.

Behavioral targeting companies could have done a better job naming and marketing their specialty. Perhaps people would have become a little more accepting and a little less squeamish, if they understood the technology and if BT had another name. Or, have privacy concerns become too overwhelming?

The digital advertising industry pays a lot of lip service to consumer "opt-out" but we rarely see evidence of ad networks or publishers making these options very visible. We've all probably popped a blood vessel or two trying to discern the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of e-mail newsletters and offers. But what if advertisers saw the opt-out process as the opportunity to initiate a conversation with the consumer? <

Mojiva CEO Dave Gwozdz and I had an interesting conversation last week after Twitter announced it would allow developers to write applications that embed a person's latitude and longitude in tweets. He referred to the overused example of someone walking by an automobile storefront and getting served up a mobile phone ad for a shiny Lexus, black on black, convertible. Actually, I added the car name. He provided the example.

ValueClick VP of targeting and optimization Joshua Koran is one of the made members of the BT (that's "behavioral targeting") mafia, one of the minds behind Yahoo's behavioral engine for a number of years before coming to ValueClick in 2007. The ad server and performance ad network is not always known for its BT initiatives, so Koran brought us up to speed on their offerings. But in the process, we asked him to reflect a bit on some of the basics of BT, the major models and challenges marketers face in unraveling the complexity.

Talking about behavioral targeting and retargeting reminds me a little of stepping into a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream store. There are as many BT definitions as there are ice cream flavors. And Cold Stone Creamery creates the "ultimate consumer experience" by allowing patrons to design their own personalized ice cream flavor with toppings that range from Oreo cookie crumbs to strawberry and blueberries. BT companies serve up ads online to provide each consumer a tailor-made experience based on past clicks and downloads.

The newly re-launched DailyMe.com is bringing the notion of transparency in a new direction by letting readers of its aggregated news service see how the behavioral tracking models work.

Consumer intent is extremely difficult to prove, even with the correct data to analyze it. Last week I wrote about BT companies merging in-store cash register data with online cookie data to better understand consumer buying trends. Let's take the concept one step further and add data that suggests consumer intent. The reality is closer than you might think.