We've had mixed success encouraging companies to engage in on-site behavioral targeting for 4 months since releasing Offermatica Affinity Targeting. I should clarify. When companies DO affinity targeting they see improvement in their key performance metrics. Yet it remains difficult to motivate companies to engage in behavioral targeting at all.

The difficulty stems from a belief that on site BT is complicated. I hear people say that the effort requires major work and organizational change. To be fair, between no BT and full BT, there is significant work and major change required. Fortunately, getting started requires neither.

Here are 4 things that you can do right now to find quick wins with on site behavioral targeting:

• Remove irrelevant information
• Add an obvious link to interesting content/products
• Change layout based on screen-size
• How about a simple question?

Remove irrelevant information:
Simply removing a subscription solicitation for someone who has already subscribed and using the space for a paid ad can be done in a day, and with no hand-wringing from the brand or legal folks. Small changes like this have the benefit of providing a success story that can be used to convince the powers that be to allow more experimentation.

Add an obvious link to interesting content/products
This is the simplest form of “category affinity targeting” or showing content based on things that the person has shown an interest in either earlier in the same session, or in a prior session. A simple example is to add a single line in an obvious place that says: “Click here to see more ...” If your site sells software for Mac and PC users, it might be “Click here for more MAC products.” For simplicity’s sake, target to the FIRST thing that they looked at. We have tested lots of scoring techniques, and the first-interest seems to always do well.

Change layout based on screen-size
Look at you page on your 2 most common screen sizes. Are there 1-2 elements that should be moved up for people viewing on a smaller screen? There often are.

How about a simple question?
It is not always necessary to guess a visitor’s preferences. How about asking a simple question and adding the answer to their profile for targeting. Try “Would you prefer faster/less graphics or slower/more graphics?” With a single question you might lower drop-off by people with dial-up or bogged-down DSL connections.
Like living healthier, it is not necessary to change everything all at once. In fact radical change with radical investment just might hurt your chances of long-term success. A small step in the right direction with positive results can make the bigger commitment required much easier.

There is loads of good content about on-site behavioral targeting available on various blogs.

Check out:
Avinash Kaushik’s web analytics and web optimization blog.
Matthew Roche’s behavioral targeting and marketing optimization blog.
Jon Mendez’s online optimization blog