Definition: Behavioural Targeting

What is behavioural targeting?

Behavioural targeting is a digital marketing technique that aims to show consumers advertising or content based on their online behaviour.

With behavioural targeting, marketers use the browsing history, search terms, pages viewed, articles viewed or reviewed and purchase history of their target audience to create multi-dimensional profiles of their inferred interests over time. Advertising and content can then be personalised and tailored to what the person has shown an affinity for through their recorded online actions. For example, someone who frequently visits gardening websites may see adverts for gardening tools. Users who frequently search for property listings may see adverts for properties in their city. 

The aim of behavioural targeting is to improve the relevance of ads and content by tailoring them to the needs and interests of the target audience. This can lead to better performance metrics such as engagement, clicks and conversions, as content that directly addresses what a user has searched for, browsed or is interested in is more likely to pique their interest and benefit them personally.