Behavioral Targeted vs Non-targeted Online Campaign in Macedonia

Abstract

Behavioral Targeting (BT) is a technique used by online advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns, and is playing an increasingly important role in the online advertising market. Although it’s a technique that has been used for more than 10 years in online advertising, and there are surveys of its effects on developed markets, there is little evidence for the results of behavioral targeted campaigns in the developing countries as Macedonia. In this paper we give a short review of what behavioral targeting is, we list the forms of behavioral targeting, its advantages and disadvantages, and we present a comparative analysis of two advertising campaigns for a Macedonian food company - using behavioral targeting vs. using only geo-targeting (only users in Macedonia) to show the difference in results. From this analysis we may conclude that the targeted advertising provides far more than non-targeted at similar conditions. The difference in clicks is huge, even with slightly fewer impressions, and if we consider that the cost of the campaign are usually dependent on impressions (more impressions - more expensive campaign), then the cost of the campaign in targeted advertising would be lower, and finally the overall CTR is almost 5 times higher for targeted advertising. This paper tries to contribute to the scientific-research field and offer a motivation for the digital marketing agencies in developing countries and their clients to start using more behavioral targeting in their campaigns and accomplish higher results.