Behavioral targeting, and remarketing is a great way to provide relevant content to visitors after they've left your site to browse and explore elsewhere. Behavioral targeting is a technique that publishers and advertisers use to dramatically add to the impact of advertising campaigns.

Using session cookies, behavioral targeting leverages information collected on an user's browsing behavior, recent purchases, gender, demographics, pages they have visited, search queries, or even other ads on which they've clicked. From this data, publishers can select which advertisements to display to that individual. Marketers state that their click thru rates and conversions "dramatically increase" with the use of personalized behavioral content targeting. The main theory behind this is that properly targeted ads will result in greater surfer interest.

For example, assume you were recently searching for a new chainsaw to help offset your dependence on foreign oil for heating. You visited a variety of power tool sites and then decided to check the weather on Yahoo!. Behavioral targeting might show you an ad for a "Stihl Chainsaw" on your My Yahoo! page.

Think of it as personalized ads, only for you.

Below is a perfect example of my own experience with BT. Over the past two days I've been scanning the various flower sites in anticipation of Valentine's Day. True, I should be going local and supporting Lake Champlain Chocolates, The Vermont Country Store or Vermont Teddy Bear but flowers are an easy win. This morning I was on MSN.com reading the news and noticed a "ProFlowers" ad - which is clearly a targeted ad based on my behavior.