Google Tiptoes into Behavioral Targeting - Google and Behavioral Targeting: Patented Proof
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Google may be moving slowly, but it can’t afford to pass up on behavioral targeting completely. Its major rivals are starting to use behavioral targeting of various kinds in their advertising programs. Just look at Yahoo’s Smart Ads.
Truth to tell, Google has been interested in behavioral targeting for quite some time. Companies may protest all the time that you can’t tell what they’re going to do simply by looking at their patents, but those patents are proof that someone at the company thought that area was worth investigating. And Google has filed for patents that relate to behavioral targeting.
The patent applications were filed back in October of 2005. One was titled “Determining ad targeting information and/or ad creative information using past search queries.” This patent is for a technology that generates both keywords and an ad creative for an advertiser based on the content of the advertiser’s web site or landing page. That’s a pretty innovative use of past search information; it definitely goes beyond the standard form of behavioral targeting. If it is effective, it could even be more profitable by creating ads that are more likely to generate click-through traffic.
The second Google patent application was titled “Results-based personalization of advertisements in a search engine.” It was published in October of 2005, but actually filed in 2004. With that title, it sounds very much like Google plans to use its Personalized Search service for conventional behavioral targeting. To quote from the abstract: “Personalized advertisements are provided to a user using a search engine to obtain documents relevant to a search query. The advertisements are personalized in response to a search profile that is derived from personalized search results. The search results are personalized based on a user profile of the user providing the query. The user profile describes interests of the user, and can be derived from a variety of sources, including prior search queries, prior search results, expressed interests, demographic, geographic, psychographic, and activity information.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t imagine how this can be seen as anything other than the “traditional behavioral targeting” that Google emphatically denies it is interested in doing. Judging from Google’s current moves, though, it isn’t a matter of if, but when. Count on hearing more announcements from Google that sound like baby steps toward behavioral targeting. Google will insist they aren’t, of course, but advertisers and searchers should know better. If Google can be trusted to handle the personal information of its users with all of the care it deserves, this could be a win all around. If not, we could see more AOL-style information spills in the future.
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