It is inevitable that video on demand (VOD) will be ad supported. When it does, will the advertisements be targeted to who is watching? Perhaps not in the first generation of that future ad market, but that too is inevitable. So I was curious how behavioral targeting was progressing with Online Advertising. Clickz provides some answers.

Behaviorally-targeted advertising campaigns grew to double the impressions of the year before, while click-through rates increased by 166 percent in 2005. That's according to data 24/7 Real Media gathered from its OnTarget behavioral targeting network...

If we could build a behavior targeting (BT) ad model for television, I'm not sure which pieces from online are applicable. For example, BT may be most successful when advertisers "retarget" customers or prospects with relevant advertising after they've visited the advertiser's site. In television the only possibility of that I can see is if a long-form advertiser-specific content substituted for online's advertiser web site.

One thing about online BT that I find of possible interest is that audiences are more receptive to BT ads when they are not contextually targeted to the content of the target site. For instance, BT ads targeting the 'Women' segment performed below average when served to sites in the Women's Interest vertical, but performed significantly better on sites in other segments. Might that mean that commercials that are targeted to a specific viewer but not consistent to the show might stand out?