Precision Match: Buying user behavior?

How often you come across with the term of behavioral targeting, if you are a digital marketing professional? I can bet that many a times in a day. There are lot of networks, companies and individual publishers who have their own definition of behavioral targeting and claim to be one who can actually do it. However more often than not, we end up meeting with nothing else but disappointment.

Google worked on behavioral targeting for quite sometime and then opened this to adwords users. Google has associated a user’s browser cookie with its pre-defined interest categories (e.g. “Arts & Entertainment – Humor”, “Food & Drink – Cooking & Recipes”). Google aligns a user’s profile to a specific category and give advertisers a right to target the ads to a specific category or set of categories. But google still primarily tracks a users behavior through its searches. Hence, there could still be a set of data that it may be missing out i.e. it may not be reporting the engagement level and buying pattern of a user, which could lead to even better targeting, consequently great results in terms of ROI.

Preceision match  seems to be addressing the solution for this and making display performance campaign more effective. Going by the description, it seems an advertiser can actually buy user behavior instead of impressions, clicks or views. If it is so, digital marketing will become even more effective and a lot of money going to flow towards digital media in this year. Although, we need to wait to see how users are going to respond to it. Whether they are going to consider it a better way of showing the ads of the products, which they are actually interested in, or will consider it a breach of privacy and stalking them in virtual world. Only time can tell.  

Microsoft: In pursuit of Nokia?

This whisper started in 2012 that Microsoft is all set to buy Nokia and then due to some reason decided against it. New year (2013) is giving a lot of strength to this whisper and it seems that IT giant is in the thought of buying once a leader of mobile manufacturing company, which is struggling at this point of time.

The timing of acquiring Nokia can't be better than this because, Windows-8, the recently launched OS from Microsoft is creating a lot of buzz and it seems people are liking the feel of it on mobile handsets too. Nokia is struggling in handset market but still commands a good market share. Apple's Iphone 5 are getting mixed reviews, hence there is a place for being a contender who can challenge the growing popularity of Android and Microsoft with its new launch can very well occupy that place.

The question that would rake the mind of analyst this year could be "Will Windows Phone 8 do better, if Microsoft acquires Nokia?" Only future can tell.