Behavioral Targeting is here to stay? Think again.

Top Four Trends Marketers Need to Be Aware of for 2022

Behavioral Targeting here to stay?

Behavioral targeting has long been the foundation of digital advertising in the cookie-based era. Most digital marketing campaigns were launched based on the information from third-party cookies to target the right customers. Behavioral targeting has highly impacted our daily lives, and many folks still think that it is here to stay. But is it?

In this month’s Debunked edition, we invite Umberto Torrielli, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Silverbullet and 4D, to discuss why behavioral targeting is no more, and the four trends marketers need to be aware of in 2022.

A look back.

When we talk about behavioral targeting in general terms, we simply mean that technology is used to learn something about a consumer based on what they have done in the past. This insight can then be used to predict what that person is going to do next.

The way that has been done to date, is centered around exploring what the behavior of a customer has been historically, putting that person into a category or segment, and then leveraging that data to say what we expect this person to do next. This has been the bread and butter of adtech for years.

The problem is, for behavioral targeting to work, given the onus on learning from past behavior, it needs to be tied to some kind of history, like browser history, to figure out the things that customers like. What cookies have done historically is store this information about where users have been online, and this was tracked by third-party cookies. 

As third-party cookies are being deprecated, behavioral data will cease to exist and will no longer be accessible. For marketers, this sparks a problem as the industry has spent countless dollars building technology to support an outdated methodology.

Think again.

While behavioral targeting looms in the past, marketers need to think ahead and explore new ways of working. And, a big part of this re-think is centered around contextual. Here are some key trends marketers need to be aware of in the next year:

1.Privacy is becoming more and more important

• Privacy legislation is going to get more stringent across the globe. Digital marketers must face the challenge of campaign disruptions and figure out partners and solutions to continue performing.

2. Context targeting is here to stay

• Context targeting is a future-proofed and 100% compliant solution for advertisers, especially global brands, to launch marketing campaigns in a privacy-first, post-cookie era. Context can be powerful to target the right customer with the right content at the right moment.

3. Advanced technologies are empowering the advertising industry to generate better performance

• AI and machine learning have been used more widely in the adtech industry to reach target customers at the right moment. This new technology is a powerful tool to generate insights and empower marketing campaigns to perform better.

4.Video context is on the rise and all marketers are talking about it

• Video is becoming one of the major marketing tools for advertisers to create more engaging user experiences, which makes video context an essential part to launch in-the-moment marketing for customers.

As the privacy-first, cookie-less era is fast approaching, marketers need to face the challenge head on, and start to put the building blocks in place. Our advanced Context Outcome Engine, 4D, is here to help you step into the privacy-first era with confidence.

Click to find out more about 4D today!