Is behavioral targeting by pharmaceutical brands cyber stalking or effective marketing?

Everywhere I go these days, people are talking about behavioral marketing. At iMedia, at the OPA, advertisers and sellers are confounded by how to scale this tactic and how to make it work.

Behavioral marketing enables advertisers to select their target audience based on a user's specific Web-browsing activities. Let's say I'm on Yahoo! Health, looking at various diets. An advertiser can make the assumption based on this behavior that I'm trying to lose weight. Thereafter, no matter where I go throughout the Yahoo! site, I can be targeted with weight loss ads based on my earlier browsing behavior.

There are still plenty of discussions, both on the client side and internally at agencies, about the appropriate uses of behavioral marketing, especially for pharmaceutical brands. Does it create the impression with consumers that their privacy is being invaded? Is it an acceptable tactic for targeting general conditions? What if the disease state carries a stigma, such as hepatitis C or herpes?

For conditions that are sensitive -- such as STDs, depression and infectious diseases -- marketers have to consider if the tactic may appear to be "e-stalking." Without definitive answers to these questions, many pharmaceutical companies have chosen to avoid behavioral marketing, at least until there is greater consensus on appropriate use.

However, many non-pharmaceutical advertisers enthusiastically employ behavioral marketing. For many brands, case studies suggest yields that make the tactic a compelling option. Very simply, they have seen improved back-end results, although sometimes not in the volume anticipated.

So after reconciling the potential pay-off in results versus scaling problems and the possible perception among users that they're being followed online, who in the pharma world is right for behavioral marketing? I believe it has a place in the media plan if it's done sensitively and if the condition is appropriate. Hair loss, flu and high blood pressure, for example, are sufficiently free of social stigmas that they make good candidates for behavioral targeting.

The key to successful behavioral marketing is frank and honest communication between agencies, clients and their legal teams to determine when this potentially effective tactic makes sense. At the same time, clients should be aware that increased back-end results may not be scalable, an ongoing struggle that online publishers and ad agencies are still working to optimize.

Debrianna Obara is media director for i-FRONTIER, an aQuantive company. i-FRONTIER is ranked among the top 100 interactive agencies by AdAge, AdWeek and Media Magazine, and has been honored with numerous awards from groups including AdAge, Cannes, Deloitte & Touche, PricewaterhouseCoopers, American Advertising Federation, KPMG and others.

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Because of the sensitivity of health issues, there's often a fine line pharmas have to balance when employing new marketing options.

For example, many marketers are tentatively stepping into the blog arena, either monitoring and contributing to established blogs, creating their own, or creating content that gets syndicated. There are opportunities here for pharma firms, but again, caution is key.

Chat rooms are another place marketers are visiting. They actually provide ideal audiences for pharmaceutical companies. But strict FDA guidelines make advertising in these places risky. There are ways pharma marketers can get into the action here, though, too.

Despite the cautionary tales, there's still a lot pharmaceutical firms can do online. There are a surprisingly healthy number of case studies and research projects that validate and support the Web's multi-faceted role in the pharmaceutical sector.

Take a look at how AstraZeneca used rich media, for example, to help brand its Rhinocort Aqua prescription nasal spray.