BT WEEK POST 3: THE MECHANICS OF BT

The Mechanics of BT


The following is a simplified description of how a BT ad is served. When a user requests a page managed by a BT enabled ad server, the user’s PC also shares the cookie info. Because the behavioral targeting platform stores the user’s behavior with that cookie text on its servers, it can instantly know what sorts of ads would be most appropriate for you.

Imagine that your profile tells it that ads for real estate, financial services, travel, and auto are relevant to you. Based upon this info, the server could compare the revenue it could earn from serving you various ads. Perhaps the travel ads are worth a $12 CPM, while real estate is $15, financial services are worth $19, and auto are worth at least $20. The server selects auto and identifies the type of auto ad relevant to you. The ad is then served on the page as it loads for you. All this activity takes places in the milliseconds between the time you request a page and the time it appears on your screen. See below:



There’s a lot more to it than that. For example, an ad server might decide to serve the travel ad if the time limit for serving the travel impressions is about to run out. Or more than one BT provider might have the rights to sell a particular ad space. But what’s above? That’s the gist.

BT DEPENDENCIES

The system naturally depends on several things:

1. That the consumer has a cookie. Increasingly, consumers are eliminating cookies from their PCs periodically. Comscore research from 2007 reported that about 30% of consumers deleted their cookies at least monthly as a way to reducing their privacy concerns.

2. That the consumer has not opted out of BT. Partly as a way of avoiding federal regulation of BT, the BT industry has set up a voluntary opt out program that lets users choose not to participate in BT targeting. The jury is still out on whether this voluntary program will be deemed sufficient to avoid federal regulations or statutes. The Network Advertising Initiative website (http://www.networkadvertising.org) allows consumers to opt out of ad networks individually or collectively. See below:



Opting out doesn’t reduce advertising delivered, only the extent to which it is behaviorally targeted. When I opted out of all programs as an experiment, I appeared to get a lot more mortgage and other low CPM advertising. Which makes sense, of course.

3. That a BT enabled ad decision server is monitoring the ad placements on the requested page. Not every ad unit is served by a BT enabled server. But an increasingly large proportion are. After all, there is A LOT of money to be made. And advertisers LOVE this technology because it leads to tremendous results.


BT INFO WILL CONTINUE NEXT WEEK. BECAUSE FRIDAY, AS ALWAYS, WILL BE LIP SYNC DAY AT OLDMTA!