The kitchen sink approach to behavioral targeting introduces another conundrum. When attempting to put the right message in front of the right person at the right time, through multiple forms of behavioral targeting, a significant workload implication arises… a lot more strategic thinking, media planning and creative are required.

Event-based ad-server and network targeting all require additional thought, planning and creative. There are advertisers that create as many as five customer segments with behavioral targeting, with different messages for different behaviors. Plus they have the traditional aspects of the campaigns for non-targeting to manage. When you put it all together, there is non-targeting creative, targeting creative and additional creative for optimizing both campaigns. If you’re using an ad agency, it can be costly for just one month’s worth of banners.

Think a bit more about this; it is not just a matter of simply creating more banners. First the advertiser has to determine what it wants each of the behavioral segments to do when they encounters them, both out on the web as well as when they land on the website. Kitchen sink approaches consider the targeting externally, driving prospects, recurring transactions, referral programs, re-enrollments, et cetera, and internal transactions. Messaging has to be created and creative built. This is an expensive proposition.

The circular strategy
First-party marketing benefits the advertiser because they can deploy a circular strategy. Start anywhere in the cycle and the messaging and the "if/then" processes all remain the same:

1. Customer segments are created internally based on profiled data, shopping patterns and anonymous site-side behavioral analytics.
2. Existing customers are recognized and re-targeted online through first-party ad serving. Users are driven back to the site, while prospects are tagged and driven to a different rendering of the advertiser’s site (dynamic content management). A great example here is Coremetrics.
3. Content-management tools distinguish customers from prospects and position messages and products accordingly and leverage the information written to the cookie during the advertising campaign -- banners seen, sites visited sequentially -- to optimize conversion rates.
4. Site-side analytics reads the first-party cookie data, which includes eCRM on existing customers, anonymous ad serving history information on both existing customers and prospect browsers from the first-party ad server and content management decisions used to serve, track and optimize site navigation.
5. eCRM improves customer segment models based on improved conversions and enhanced site navigation designs resulting from site-analytics and content management, as well as the holistic web-wide view into acquisition marketing courtesy of the first-party ad serving.

All steps read and write to the same first-party cookie -- the advertiser’s cookie -- and therefore each technology benefits from and strengthens the next one in the cycle. The messaging becomes altogether more simplistic to manage with first-party. There are existing customer segments and prospects. You can recognize and distinguish both site-wide and web-wide. Messaging and creative strategy become fully integrated based on acquisition, revenue, recurring sales and cyclical objectives.