Profiling

Also known as: audience discovery

Profiling involves building a profile around customers and/or prospects. This information can be used to target products through online advertising or direct marketing. Using profiles for targeted advertising is called targeting.

For example, a profile can include Internet pages a visitor has visited, gender, age, social class, products they have purchased in the past, and a geographic location. Interests from Internet pages visited can be obtained by tracking visitors across the Internet using cookies.

Demographic data can be obtained from other sources, such as one's own customer base or forms and surveys where people are asked to fill them out. Often campaigns targeting demographic data are not directed at individuals, but rather an "average profile" is compiled by medium.