Recently Google has started to tailor the delivery of its paid search advertisements, basing the delivery on not just the search query, but the previous query and sometimes even combinations of recent queries executed by the searcher.

Keith Vera
Account Manager

Well, sort of. Recently Google has started to tailor the delivery of its paid search advertisements, basing the delivery on not just the search query, but the previous query and sometimes even combinations of recent queries executed by the searcher. Google’s new approach to paid search ad delivery is detailed nicely in a blog post by Zachary Rodgers of ClickZ (link below).

Google has been quick to shoot down any notion that they are moving towards true behavioral targeting. Nick Fox, Google’s group business product manager for ads quality states, "We’re not doing things like trying to profile the user to find out if the user is a man or a woman or a 45-year-old or a 25-year-old," he said. "In the context of search it doesn’t seem that powerful, and we haven’t seen any evidence that it will be that powerful."

While online behavioral targeting carries heavy privacy issues, I would disagree with Fox in that I can easily see how behavioral targeting can immensely help paid search advertisers. All marketers have a strong idea of who is in their target audience; wouldn’t paid search campaign ad servings be a lot better off if advertisers knew exactly what audience demographics their impressions were reaching? On the other hand, is capturing this kind of detailed information on searchers an excessive violation of privacy rights?

So let’s hear your opinion. Who out there would like to see stronger behavioral targeting techniques for paid search ad placements?