Over the past decade, marketers have spent an increasing amount of their marketing budget on web display advertising. In fact, U.S. online advertising spending is expected to reach $31.3 billion this year—a 20% increase, according to a recent report by eMarketer.
This growth, despite challenging economic times, has been fueled by continuous innovation in display ad targeting. A shift from site-based targeting to audience-based buys has driven more new growth. In audience-based targeting, marketers target specific consumer segments—based on a rich data set that defines audiences by characteristics—with media displayed across a wide range of web sites – much like a direct or email marketer would segment their files. According to comScore, in 2010 alone audience based targeting experienced a 514% lift in the number of people who searched for a brand within four weeks of ad exposure.
Originally, audience-based targeting was dominated by online behavioral data. This...
