Pervasive use of behavioral targeting in online advertising is in the offing and will drive search engine marketing agencies to expand offerings, according to a new report from Forrester Research titled "The Reality of Behavioral Ad Targeting," writes DM News. As online media costs increase and inventory gets tight, behavioral targeting becomes more attractive because it identifies lower-tier, less-expensive media that reaches behaviorally receptive customers, according to the report.

Also, improved technology now allows the building of more detailed behavioral profiles based on browsing, registration info, ad responses and blog postings. Still, behavioral targeting is merely one alternative, albeit becoming more important, and so should be used along with contextual and demographic targeting, according to the report.

Echoing Forrester's prediction, leading behavioral marketing firm Tacoda reports recent dramatic growth, saying the number of sites in its behavioral online advertising network has tripled to more than 3,000 in the last three months, the number of monthly unique visitors has reached 130 million from 85 million, the number of monthly ad impressions has moved to above 1 billion from about 300 million, and the weekly number of campaigns is averaging 80, compared with around 40 three months ago.

Forrester surveyed 259 marketers in 4Q05 for the study. "We learned that marketers prefer to target by context and behavior over demographics and that they are actively using both advanced targeting methods," said Shar VanBoskirk, Forrester analyst and author of the report.

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