Ad Age: Behavioral targeting Boosts Airline's Internet Ad Results

American Airlines and its TM agency - formerly Temerlin McClain - discovered that online media was the most efficient among media used in a branding test, and that employing behavioral targeting provided an additional 25 percent boost in efficiency, despite the additional costs involved.

Revenue Science determined which among the WSJ.com site readers were the ones interested in business travel by watching reading patterns of users on the online newspaper. When compared with run-of-site flights, this targeting resulted in netting 115 percent more business travelers. And this group remembered the ads better and experience more brand lift (145 percent), according to figures derived by Dynamic Logic.

American found that while behavioral targeting made finding travelers 25 percent cheaper, it proved to be 45 percent more efficient at finding heavy travelers, defined as those who fly more than five times a year.