N.Y. Times: 'Net Firms Using Behavioral Marketing to Target Ads

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on August 15, 2006 - 11:46am.

New York - The New York Times on Tuesday reported on the behavioral marketing tactics employed on the Internet, in the wake of AOL's accidental publishing online of the search queries entered by over 650,000 of its users over three months. In addition to AOL, firms including MSN and Yahoo also track the search queries entered by users to target them with ads. "Search behavior is the closest thing we have to a window onto people's intent," Jeff Marshall, a senior vice president at ad agency Starcom IP, told The Times. "When people are gathering information to make a choice, that means they are often going to spend money."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/technology/15search.html