Behavioral targeting is a technique used by online advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their campaign by selecting users based on their online activities. It can be highly effective in retargeting and prospecting campaigns alike.

Some of these activities include:

  • Specific pages browsed on a website
  • Clicks on specific product categories
  • Last viewed products or most viewed products by a user
  • Time spent on specific pages
  • Specific terms searched on a website
  • Abandoned/Saved Shopping Carts
  • Users’ affinity towards particular products
  • Users’ seasonal shopping habits

How behavioral targeting works:

Part 1: Gathering user insights

Non-personally identifiable behavioural information can come from a variety of sources:

  • Tracking pixels on the advertiser’s website (Third-party cookies)
  • Data stored in DSP’s (Demand Side Platforms)
  • Data stored in DMP’s (Data Management Platforms)
  • First Party Data (Previous customers or email subscribers)
  • Google Analytics or similar tools
  • Facebook or LinkedIn audience explorers

Part 2: Combining audience insights into segments

Cluster your audiences into different segments based on behavior or intent. (for example: shopping cart abandoners, people who searched for certain products on the website, in-market users, repeat customers, etc.)

Part 3: Creating audiences in your DSP or Ad Platform

Use your audience segments and create custom lookalike or retargeting audiences with their preferred DSP or network (Google Ads, App Nexus, Facebook, etc.).Â