Targeted advertising

Targeted advertising is a form of advertising, including online advertising, that is directed towards an audience with certain traits, based on the product or person the advertiser is promoting.

These traits can either be demographic with a focus on race, economic status, sex, age, generation, level of education, income level, and employment, or psychographic focused on the consumer values, personality, attitude, opinion, lifestyle, and interest. This focus can also entail behavioral variables, such as browser history, purchase history, and other recent online activities. The process of algorithm targeting eliminates waste.

Traditional forms of advertising, including billboards, newspapers, magazines, and radio channels, are progressively becoming replaced by online advertisements.

Through the emergence of new online channels, the usefulness of targeted advertising is increasing because companies aim to minimize wasted advertising. Most targeted new media advertising currently uses second-order proxies for targets, such as tracking online or mobile web activities of consumers, associating historical web page consumer demographics with new consumer web page access, using a search word as the basis of implied interest, or contextual advertising.