More on the Promise of Behavioral Targeting

Phil Leggiere has another great interview in today’s Behavioral Insider column titled “Beyond CPM: Bidding and Behavioral Data.” This time it’s with Alex Hooshmand of Right Media. Right Media is a transparent auction based platform that matches advertisers and publishers and optimizes ROI based on targeting. The exchange (RMX) officially opened to publishers this week.

Much of the interview echoes the tenor of my post earlier in the week where I argued that the promise of behavioral targeting is in intent driven platforms not traditional advertising models. Of note is that Hooshmand mentions Search as the ‘next frontier’ of Behavioral Targeting.

Hooshmand also discusses some of the benefits of Right Media’s revolutionary open exchange:

With auction-exchange pricing, you’ve got a model where you’re only paying for users you think are valuable, at a price that makes sense for your ROI goals. There’s a much closer balance of performance and price.

As far as targeting based on intentions:

With an exchange, if advertisers know the specific kind of data points they’re looking for, they have a much better chance of finding maximum ROI. Advertisers tend to know what kinds of behavioral data they need most at a given time to add value to a campaign.

And finally his thoughts on where BT is headed:

BI: What are some other ‘next frontiers’ you see for behavioral targeting going forward?

Hooshmand: Search engines and marketers have been sitting on a gold mine of data that’s so far been stuck in one channel. But we now have several clients who are using post-search behavior to target

RMX is changing the game. Interestingly, in November Yahoo made a sizable ($45m) strategic investment in the company. It will be interesting to see how RMX can be optimized cross-media but clearly their platform and network will assist marketers in gathering the intentions of users. Great stuff… and I believe in the Promised Land!