Target: Enabling Behavior.

Monday (3/10) a NYT story ("To Aim Ads, Web Is 
Keeping Closer Eye on You") dug into behavioral 
targeting on major websites and portals 
specifically the amount of user generated 
data points collected. 

For the piece The Times commissioned a study 
from audience measurement firm comScore looking 
at the amount of data collected around users' 
online activities.

"Yahoo came out with the most data 
collection points in a month on its own sites
-- about 110 billion collections, or 811 for 
the average user. In addition, Yahoo has about 
1,700 other opportunities to collect data about the 
average person on partner sites like eBay, 
where Yahoo sells the ads."

The stunning amount of data collected over a 
month was broken out even further on their blog 
(How Do They Track You? Let Us Count the Ways)

A portion of the data points collected may 
be what is called passive data mining and some, 
more egregious data points will be viewed as 
problematic form an end-users perspective.  

The most important question is -
 what data is most actionable?.

What are the most actionable behaviors for 
targeting.  This may not be the obvious 
"top-down" list because factoring in the 
psychographics of what people considered 
intrusive is important (think Facebook Beacon) 
and will yield a better list. 

Think video advertising as a metaphor here. 
The most obvious way to monetize via advertising 
would be total takeovers and long intrusive 
advertisements that could not be skipped.

As socialmedia behavior generates even more data, 
how can we effectively target but not disrupt?. 

The obvious answer for me is to enable or augment 
an existing behavior and the experience around it.  

The not so obvious part of that equation is 
doing it eloquently and effectively. 

Bifurcating behavior from content measurement
is another decision tree.  When does it make sense
to track the behavior around content?, when does it 
make sense just to track the content?. 

In our graph below we look at *some* of the 
types of social engagement behavior data points.

During which behavior will your message 
mean the most in the least disruptive way?