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I am pretty sure Google has the ability to handle all that information and turn into actionable insight.

Matt,

I am not sure how much people trust Google were their data. Average user does not even know what is being tracked and how it is being used. Both Yahoo and MSN are developing BT capability so why will Google not do it? I know yahoo has been doing similar sort of targeting for years and are rolling out new BT platform. I was surprised to see an ad of an Indian Matrimonial site when I logged out of my yahoo email account (this was about 6 year ago). How did they know I was an Indian? My name? My search (I did very few searches), my email, my other behavior on their site? I still see Y! India on my left hand side menu bar. I am not distrusting them for this, I like their efforts.
I don’t think getting into BT will wipe out Google. What about if Google give users and option of opting in (which is what they will have to) or say opting out (which is what most BT ad networks do) will that calm the privacy issues? Publishers and advertisers will love it, they will make more money or reach qualified audience. There will be chance for companies using Google Analytics to monetize users who are not even there on their site anymore (more on this in another blog article). Users will get what they are really interested in rather than random ads.

- Anil

At the moment most people trust Google with pretty much all their online data, if that trust were to be misused then with a single click of a mouse Google would disappear.

Actually it was a lady from Google Analytics that reminded me of this only a few weeks ago when I posed a similar question to her.

Matt Hopkins
http://www.webanalticmatt.com

It’s similar to what the grocery industry is going through in trying to effectively utilize their loyalty card data to identify who their most profitable shoppers are and create more targeted marketing and merchandising assortments in their stores.

Google’s ability to handle all this information and turn it into actionable insights could potentially have huge repercussions for other industries as well.

I just visited wannabepresidents.com, it is completely based on feevy and does not seem to have a lot of traffic. If the owner of wannabepresidents.com is reading this then contact me (consulting fee applies ) I can help you monetize your traffic and help John McCain.

- Anil

Going back to you AIDA example
A – Attract – a visitor visited John McCain’s site
I – Interested that’s why they visited and every single click is telling more and more about their behavior
D – Desire – Send the right message via Behavioral Targeting Network (you already know what interests them by their behavior on your site) and create desire. Right message creates more desire.
A – Get them to contribute, vote etc.

Hope this clarifies.

In targeting consumers, however, I don’t think behavioral targeting will ever be as effective as just plain old, simple, targeting of keywords and phrases. Why? AIDA. The I – Interest – is already there by the simple fact of the search, or the page content with the ads. Attract – Interest – Desire – Action has been effective throughout the past century.

The ads or search results or links on content relevant sites already have the Attention of the user if they’re clicked. That leaves the “creating want / desire” part the purpose of the ad, and the call to Action is a “click” to take the visitor to your landing page. That’s what has been shown to be effective online in this primitive time.

How do you target “behavior” online, outside of the behavior while being online, which seems – at best – cloudy and incomplete. And direct testing is not possible, and not very useful.

Behavioral targeting, by it’s nature, is based on “effect.” It’s not “causative” and doesn’t have the ability to be causative, short of behavioral altering, which is useless in politics, except over a very long period of time, like 40 years or more.

Thank you for the great post and thank you for letting me reply. Take care and create a truly phenomenal week ahead!

So, now that you’re 2.5/3, isn’t it time to make another set of predictions???

Make sure you are not narrowing down by city.