Recently I was at a conference and one of my favorite topics came up: de-averaging behavioral targeting segments. This is an important issue for marketers today. Let’s take a look at why.

Why BT Sausage Can Be Dangerous

The typical audience segments used in behavioral targeting today are anything but transparent. In fact, they are a lot like sausage — you don’t really know what you’re getting. They are made up of many components and can contain a variety of data and signals from different sites, providers, activities, etc.  And while some of these components may perform well for a given campaign or creative, others may not. Consequently, such laggards can reduce average performance for the overall segment.

Why BT Sausage Isn’t All Bad

So does that mean that marketers should stop buying behavioral targeting sausage? No. These segments contain both “excellent cuts of meat,” as well as other less desirable “protein sources.” However, the trick is realizing that in online advertising, different data components perform differently for different campaigns, and even for different creatives used on the same campaign. In other words, one campaign’s mystery meat may be another campaign’s filet mignon.

Solving the BT Sausage Problem

But in order to fully capitalize on the different components within a segment, marketers need insights. If an advertiser could gain insight into how the various components of a behavioral targeting segment are performing, then they could “de-average” it. Such insight would allow them to eliminate the “bad” components, and drive more budget to the “good” components. Doing so would enable them to significantly improve overall performance.

The Key to Making BT Work Better

To gain the insights needed to drive better performance for behavioral targeting, marketers need a platform that:

1. Allows custom BT segments to be built and launched quickly
2. Provides full transparency as to how each component of the BT segments are performing, including spend, clicks, and conversions, etc.
3. Allows instant editing of the BT segment, without the need to rebuild a cookie pool every time a component is added or removed.

Fortunately, Simpli.fi, has a platform that does all of the above, and more.  In fact, while advertisers can bring their own data to our system and keep it private for only their own use, they can also fashion custom segments out of the 8 Billion monthly search events that we license from our dozens of search partners.

So, the next time you are ready to dine at the behavioral targeting buffet, give Simpli.fi a holler, and we’ll help you to turn your behavioral targeting sausage into some steak that delivers results!