Behavioral targeting allows marketers to respond to identified consumer behaviors and gives them the ability to deliver "timely" messaging in an environment other than where the behavior was captured.

What this means to advertisers is that they now have the ability to deliver a message to a car shopper in a non-automotive research environment to a consumer who has been identified as in-market for a particular vehicle segment based on a previous behavior they had captured on a 3rd party automotive research site.

This level of laser-precision targeting was previously unheard of. Think about it. Imagine for a moment the total US Population. Then assume for the purpose of illustration that 2% are in market at any given time. Of that 2%, the audience becomes even more fragmented across every possible vehicle category from SUVs to Luxury Vehicles to Sedans, etc. As you can see, tracking down in-market car shoppers can be very difficult; yet looking for specific category intenders really becomes trying to find a needle in a haystack.

The reality is, outside of search marketing, contextual advertising and behavioral targeting, every other form of media is likely to have considerable waste, or in other words deliver messaging to people who would not consider the respective vehicle in the first place.