Emarketer predicts that online advertising in Canada will reach $3.08 billion in 2012.  An increase of 16.3% over 2011 spend of $2.64 billion.  The EXchange Report survey of advertisers suggests that Audience buying including behavioural and re-targeting in addition to video will fuel growth in the coming years.  Much of the advanced targeting growth is driven by the use of DSP technology either via networks or trade desk buying.  Although Canada lags behind the US in percentage of online spend attributed to audience buying, 2012 and 2013 will see significant growth with a greater industry focus on education, consumer privacy and commitment by local Canadian players and agencies.

Online behavioural advertising, which is also called “interest-based advertising” uses information gathered through the tracking of browsing and search behavior, ad interactions, shopping history, geography, and demographics to create behavioual categories.  Behavioual categories are used to predict user preferences and to show consumers’ ads that are most likely to be of interest to them.  Companies including some of our clients layer in offline behaviour gathered from syndicated research to help refine the categories.

Online behavioural targeting has shown to increase conversion by as high as 3 x that of content targeting which is often used as a proxy for reaching the right audience.  Retargeting which is specifically related to users who have taken action within a brand’s site or display messaging is significantly higher in terms of engagement and direct response metrics than standard types of behavioural retargeting. The downside is limited reach.  However low the reach, the insights garnered from online interaction with a brand can offer valuable and relevant messaging options to increase engagement, conversion and re-purchase.