HOW DID THIS AD GET IN MY BROWSER? A THEORETICAL EXAMINATION OF ONLINE TARGETING AND SEGMENTATION PRACTICES AS THEY RELATE TO MEDIA PLANNING ON THE INTERNET

INTRODUCTION

"The Internet's real potential as an advertising medium will be realized when brand managers can turn to particular Web sites and know with some degree of certainty who the users of these sites are and when they are willing to look at advertisements." (Shimp 2003, p. 401).

While Internet targeting capabilities have not reached yet Shimp's exigent request they have come a long way. On September 23, 2004, USAToday.com announced it is the first web site offering advertisers the combination of behavioral and demographic data (Morrisey 2004).

Using technological advances, the world of Internet targeting, segmenting, and media planning evolved, giving new meaning to old terms such as behavioral targeting and contextual marketing (Fadner 2004c). Behavioral targeting has nothing to do with direct mail as it used to (De Wulf, Hoekstra, and Commandeur 2000) and contextual marketing happens in the "marketspace" as opposed to the marketplace where physical buyers and sellers meet (Rayport and Sviokla 1996). Behavioral targeting was one of the two most talked about Internet marketing tactics at the first Interactive Advertising World conference, held during 2004's Advertising Week in New York (Fadner 2004b).