In a marketing climate that sees emerging or a re-popularizing of old school methodology, behavioral targeting is ALL the current rage.

Ad buzz appears to emanate from new research at Google, taking yet another step towards interstellar domination. Take notes if you are launching an advertising company with an emerging technology.

Relatively quietly, Google announced that they were increasing their ad targeting functionality to include some slightly more behavioral elements. It won’t be long before they add tsotchke’s and direct mailing to their slew of marketing products (just kidding…for now). Susan Wojcicki, Google vice president of product management for advertising, states “Google has been testing for several weeks a new advertising feature that delivers ads based not simply based on a specific search term, but also on the immediately previous search.” Google claims its ad targeting remains rooted in search activity rather than trying to deduce relationships from other sorts of sensitive, and personal, user information. Call them what you want, Google has a knack for sensing heat on marketing execs.

Very interesting statistics are being revisited by online marketing agencies that are reaching to capture greater portions of marketing budget. In 2005, an automotive category test was launched on behavioral that ran from July 21 through August 25. The click-through was 64% lower for targeted impressions, though the campaign achieved a 323 percent increase in conversion rate per 1,000 impressions. Those are startling figures for any big ticket e-Comm or service company looking to enhance the bottom line; and there are plenty of case studies to support an average conversion increase of well over 100%.

Click cost can entirely double or even triple, as you might expect, for the additional impressions served.

How behavioral targeting works, on a more traditional online ad serving basis, is that cookies are placed once a click is received on the accompanying landing page. Whether bounce or conversion, the visitor will be impressed upon the ads of the host as they additionally search within relative categories. Not every site is participatory, but many are. Companies with longer or more seasonal sales cycles will find this product extremely helpful to keep the bug in consumers’ ears until they are prepared to make a purchase.