In an example of how BT can be used for clients other than directly in a campaign, Beyond's Srishti Gupta explained that Verizon brought the company customer research on who the telecom giant should be targeting. When it didn't seem to fit what Beyond thought, they turned to ad network, publisher and social media partners to develop detailed consumer profiles of who Verizon clients have been, which was very different from what the company had assumed through offline research. "They ended up changing their own cosumer data set offline based on the data we gave them," she said. Now, …

The million dollar question everyone’s asking, today, is how the economy is affecting behavioral budgets. And some of the answers are hardly heartening. “Direct response clients are falling back on their comfort area, which is search,” Chris Hansen, 360i’s VP of Performance Marketing, said on a panel titled, “Is Behavioral a Bargain?” In many instances, Rachel Ooms, Group Media Director, Moxie Interactive, behavioral is still not even an option with publisher partners. “Our clients are very interested in using behavioral when it works,” David Martin, VP, Digital Media, Ignited, said somewhat vaguely.

Leading of the agency panel on BT, with execs from Interaction, Havas, Moxie and Ignited, Chris Hansen of 360i acknowledged that shrinking display ad budgets are affecting BT as clients are falling back on their comfort area in tough times, "and that comfort area is search." That means making a bigger push on explaining how BT can help boost the conversion rate of display.

Highlighting how the line between agencies and ad networks are increasingly blurring, Ed Montes of Havas Digital discussed in the morning's second keynote the agency's creation of a virtual brand network for managing, planning and buying online inventory in a much more data-driven way, similar to an ad network or exchange. A key to that system is Havas' Artemis database management system, which has profiles of more than one-third of the global online population. As to who owns the data, Montes assured that the agency's clients own their data. Montes said financial services and travel industry clients, more accustomed …

During a Q&A session following his talk, Hirsch said explaining the value of BT to consumers won't be possible until the industry has a set of standards, a common language, that will make the benefits to consumers more clear. Consumers think of BT as a way for companies to know everything about them rather than a way to deliver relevant, personalized content and advertising. In terms of BT's growth, he said it will be "baked into everything we do."

By 2020, behavioral targeting spend will surpass search spend, according to OMMA keynote Jeff Hirsch, president and CEO of AudienceScience -- formerly known as RevenueScience. (In case you’re wondering, Hirsch insisted the company is still very much focused on revenue and the science of generating it for itself and its clients.) Either way, if behavioral targeting is not part of your strategy, then you’re not going to survive in this space, Hirsch warned. That said, more companies have experience in the field than even they might know. Frequency capping, which has existed “since the beginning,” is a …

Giving the keynote presentation kicking off the day, Audience Science CEO Jeff Hirsh came out with a bold prediction: that BT spending will outpace search spending by 2020, at more than $25 billion. Today, its only a fraction compared to the 40% of online spending search accounts for. The key to building BT revenue is advertisers and publishers yielding more from push-based activity on the Web, as consumers browse sites other than search engines in researching purchases. Much of the current debate over who owns data ties into collecting and monetizing that audience behavior across the Web. Overall, Hirsh also …

It’s not even 9 a.m., and OMMA Behavioral attendees are already wrapping their heads around some challenging ideas like search retargeting and mobile search solutions with the help of Dave Zinman, vice president and general manager of display advertising at Yahoo. Pop quiz! With the help of cookies, how long after a consumer has seen a search ad, can they see a related/corresponding ad somewhere else online? Apparently 8 hours, but it’s typically within 15 minutes, according to Zinman.

Once again tomorrow at OMMA Behavioral we assemble the leading thinkers and practitioners of the online audience targeting arts. Almost two years ago we started this series wondering whether the ad world really needed a show devoted to a specific model of digital targeting. During our inaugural show at the Yale Club in NY, I remember WSJ VP Brian Quinn joking about the idea during a panel session. If we were going to have a show on just one kind of media buying then “Why not a show on Run-of-Site?” The need for a BT gathering was evident …