If you look at behavioral targeting as a quick fix, your results will come up short. BT needs time and "training" to succeed.

A few years ago, my family decided to get a puppy.

Like most dog owners, one of my goals was to train my new puppy, Ruby, to behave and to be a loving and well-mannered member of the family. We worked hard to teach her the behaviors necessary to create a good canine citizen.

If you've ever raised a dog you already know that it's not always an easy process. Getting the basics of behavior down requires repetition of commands and working with the dog on a continual basis. Sometimes the dog gets it right and sometimes (especially in the presence of squirrels) all that training seems to take a back seat to impulse. However, through correction, repetition and a fair amount of persistence, in time the dog will behave the way you want without your constant supervision.

I bring this up because running a behaviorally targeted campaign is in many ways similar to raising a pet: The results get better the more time you spend "training" the technology to meet your marketing goals.

Too often, marketers "try" BT and then decide after a month or two that it isn't doing what they need, so they change the parameters of the campaign to try something completely different. This is like training a puppy for a few weeks before deciding that the best solution for getting the desired results is to get a new puppy. This obviously doesn't solve the problem; it just starts the training all over again. Making huge changes in how a campaign is being measured is pretty much the same as starting the campaign all over.

Marketers should approach campaign goals with purpose and should act to make the campaign reach those goals -- behavioral targeting is a long-term strategy, not just a tactic. It's about creating a marketing plan and then testing that plan over time to identify if set goals are being met. BT is not a quick fix; it requires realistic amounts of time to test and optimize.

Measuring how a single consumer interacts with an online ad tells you something, but measuring how 10,000 consumers interact with that ad tells you something much more meaningful. However, in order to reach the big picture, or "data maturity," the mechanisms for measuring consumer behaviors need to stay in place long enough to accurately identify opportunities and trends.

The same holds true for publishers: The more data you collect, the greater the value of the targeting you provide. Measuring the traffic that comes to a site on a single day may reveal some trends, but measuring traffic for 90 days is going to reveal very specific and meaningful patterns that marketers can put to use.

It's also important to set realistic expectations about just how far a targeted campaign can take you. If the campaign is focused on brand awareness, then that's where you'll find value. If you try to use these results to measure direct response effectiveness, then you're going to be disappointed.

Likewise, if the goal of an upcoming campaign is to achieve a 6 percent clickthrough rate (CTR), then you're going to be disappointed no matter how much money or technology you throw at the campaign.

If you set a campaign goal, then it's important to measure whether the parameters of the goal are being met. It's not enough to check in on the campaign once in a while in the hope that everything is going swimmingly. Your constant supervision and optimization is required to make sure that the set metrics are being accurately measured and that the campaign is accurately targeted. Minor tweaks are expected, but changing the overall goal of the campaign is not.

Effective behaviorally targeted campaigns require patience, and there are few shortcuts to getting the data that can be used to identify actionable marketing opportunities and campaign success. Successful campaign maturity is based on the passage of time and the interactions of consumers -- and it can't be rushed. Throwing money and other resources at the problem doesn't fix it anymore than over feeding your puppy makes her grow up faster.

Also, none of this happens in a vacuum. Let the network know how the campaign is performing on a regular basis and let its experts help you optimize results and identify ways to focus on set goals. In the end, you'll be pleased that you took the time to do it right.

Marla Schimke is VP of marketing at Revenue Science, Inc.