I’ve been a number of conversations lately about data-mining and semantic search (or ‘discovery’ as one company’s CEO told me she preferred- not sure I know the difference…). In one of those exchanges I brought up the idea of tracking ‘habitual information’, a phrase I’ll take credit for originating (my five minutes of fame?). The idea struck me- there are many kinds of information I track on a habitual level: certain stock prices, weather, environmental economics, usability, etc. I am sure that there are many others who share a similar pattern of habitual information.
As a marketer I see behavioral targeting potential in this information. In a previous post I wrote about iGoogle as a potential source of behavioral data for Google. This idea of habitual information takes that model further. If you know my information habits, as opposed to simply tracking what I do while surfing, then you could target me more precisely when I do surf. So if go daily to Techcrunch, NYTimes Business section, Science Daily and have a Google Alert set for Apple Inc., I’m guessing there’s quite a few people like me out there. The ads served up on these sites collectively could target my interests.
I haven’t quite got my arms around how this might work but I’m guessing the data-miners at Google and the ad networks have got something like this on their radar- I’ll be watching for it.