An interesting pattern to be seen these days is the way by which the terms “Behavioral Marketing” and “Contextual Marketing” are used. More often than not, these words are used interchangeably and this gives an indication that they are same. For instance, don’t be surprised if a vendor call you up and refers her company as a Behavioral marketing one and as Contextual marketing next time around. This brings us to question if really exists any difference between the two. The answer is: Yes.

Are there any differences between Contextual and Behavioral marketing?

In simplest terms, Contextual form of marketing involves marketers targeting contents of ads that appear on a web page. However, in the latter form of marketing, marketers tend to target consumers directly based on their behavioral pattern. For example, if you are buying ads from ContentMatch or Google’s Adsense, then you are buying ad placements that belong to the former category. They provide text ads that are relevant to web pages contextually. In this form of marketing, for both graphical and text ads an appropriate message will be forwarded according to the content available there.

In the latter form of marketing, the marketers tend to collect the consumers information through IP information and clickstream data. An example for Behavioral marketing would be to serve automotive ads to a consumer who is in the market to have a vehicle; based on his behavior on the web. All said and done, there are issues related to reach and standardization that a behavioral marketer has to deal with. Things are supposed to be a lot better as many major players are expected to enter the fray sooner than later. Among the ones that are already existing Revenue Science, Tacoda Systems, 24/7 Real Media have a lion’s share in the market.

There are companies like Claria that take the concept of Contextual marketing to next possible level. Ads developed by them are such that they match relevance of pages contextually. The data that is collected from the users subsequently is used to make further segmentations. The targeting that follows next will be more of behavioral type rather than contextual. On observing these subtle differences that exist between the two marketing forms there wouldn’t be a great need to consider them as different entities. In future, when the behavioral marketing based companies, adware companies and publishers become more sophisticated in their targeting and segmentation activities, the ability to target behaviorally and contextually will become similar and it will deliver the best possible return on investment or highest conversion.

Conclusion

Both forms of marketing- Contextual and Behavioral go hand in hand. Though there exists minor differences between the two forms, one of them can not be discussed about without mentioning about the other. Both these forms of marketing exist online so that the marketers get maximum results for their effort and time. They work in a way so as to collect users’ information and pass it on to the marketers and who in turn will use them to their advantage.