Industry: Ecommerce

Scenario: A cell phone company serves an ad for a special offer on its newest model phone to a consumer who has clicked on cell phone ads, actively searched for cell phones and placed selected phones in her checkout cart. (See "How to Upsell Your Customers.")

For that area between impulse buys and consideration buys, behavioral targeting can boost purchases by remarketing consumers who have shown some interest in a product or service.

"BT that targets users based on similar content interests is good for improving the push effects of your campaign," says Doug Schumacher, president and creative director of Basement, Inc. "The typical sell on this is a lower CPM, but we're seeing this type of BT deliver higher response rates, as well. When your ads aren't appearing in the same channels as all the other ads in your category, your ads are going to stand out more. And that would improve a response-based metric like view-visits or click-visits.

"We're also seeing positive results occurring when the defined behavior is based on a deeper level of interest, like a site visit. Upon returning to the site via the remarketing BT, visitors are entering key conversion areas, like the shopping cart, with higher frequency. And it makes sense. If a visitor has already been to the site, then it's likely they may have done some initial shopping, but got pulled away before they finished or could decide to purchase. Thus, on a return visit, they're probably cookied, and may even have some of their items already in the shopping cart. At the very least, they're going to be familiar with the site, and we know that familiarity with a site or brand is a large factor towards generating a positive visitor experience."