Behavioral targeting is an advertising technique that is used to customize ad campaigns depending on user behavior and interests. This advertising technique explores behavioral elements, including the history of visited pages and research sites. The same applies to products placed in the basket or purchased online, clicks on banner advertising, conversion rates, online classified ads and more. The approaches allow marketers to accurately determine the interests of an internet user.

Profiling involves the use of behavioral data for the purpose of display advertising campaigns. Ads are therefore displayed according to a user’s profile. This technique can be used to optimize all online advertising campaigns.

Personalized recommendation uses behavioral data of the user to customize real-time advertising content. In this case, each ad offers a unique range of products, that are specific to the user. This technique is aimed at advertisers with an online database of products and in particular e-merchants.

The ethical issues raised by behavioral targeting include intrusion of privacy, with the collection and storage of any behavioral information and to monitor an individual. It is for this reason why some agencies make it mandatory for publishers to have a privacy policy on all websites displaying ads.

Internet is a medium with which each user chooses the content he wishes to consult, which leads to a fragmentation of the audience and therefore a specific strategy of media planning.

By 1996, the web pages were used to broadcast advertising campaigns by advertisers, depending on traffic. From the 2000s, contextual advertising emerged to provide a first response to the explosion in the number of sites advertising on the Internet. These ads are based on the text content of the page on which they are displayed. Behavioral targeting is the next step, which allows advertisers to precisely target the profile of users based on their behavior.

Behavioral targeting allows you to display ads on interests of users. A user who regularly consults golf sites will be offered commercials matching his interest. The benefit for the advertiser is that he can accurately distribute his ads to users, regardless of the sites visited. Thus, a golfer will be offered online classified ads for clubs with the latest technology on a blog or in the health section of a portal, and not only on a site that deals with the golf.

The advantage for the user is that it will not be inundated with unrelated advertising but rather whose that meet their interests. The use of discrete systems or indisclosed cookies, beyond the mere audience targeting that would give the number of readers of a site, the duration of consultation.