Targeting
Also called: targeted advertising, personalized advertising, audience targeting or targeting
In targeting, advertisers' advertisements are directed as much as possible to individuals for whom they are of interest. By spending advertising budget on an audience consisting of potentially interested customers, an advertising campaign achieves a higher return on investment.
Because of its technical capabilities, audience targeting is widely used in online advertising, for example using banners. Collecting interests and other characteristics is referred to as profiling.
Targeting can be based, among other things, on a person's interests, in response to Internet pages a user has previously visited(behavioral targeting), the content of the page being viewed(contextual targeting) or on the fact that a visitor has previously visited the advertiser's site(retargeting).
Targeting can also be applied to demographic data, such as gender, age and social class. This data can be obtained from external sources. Often, this form of targeting is not applied at the person level, but works with "average" profiles and corresponding distribution per medium. This method of targeting is widely used when scheduling commercials on radio and television.
More general forms of targeting include a person's geographic location (based on IP address), specific sections of a Web site, the time of day or day of the week. In some industries, even weather is targeted, as it can affect conversion.
