A Sit Down With WhenU's Bill Day

The third issue of Website Services Magazine (coming in May) will feature an article about behavioral marketing: "The Bright Lights and Big Promise of Behavioral." You can subscribe here. I had the opportunity to speak with WhenU CEO Bill day this afternoon, and while I'm a cynical guy by nature, much of what Bill said had me believing in the power of behavioral solutions. What behavioral provides is the "promise of democratizing ad spending," said Day, continuing "Think of it this way: if you add up all the Web page views of the big guys (Google and Yahoo) it adds up to less than ten percent of total page views." This means that if you can target an audience with your message away from these primary properties in an adjacent, behaviorally-driven manner at secondary outlets, you'll be the big winner so to speak when it comes to your return on investment. As more and more marketers are looking for a complimentary model to PPC solutions (where pricing is high and unsold inventory is low) messages can be brought to a broader web community with more precision and that's appealing when it comes to online promotions.

Some more on WhenU: WhenU offers permission-based, client-side software applications that deliver a limited number of behaviorally targeted and contextually relevant coupons, ads and comparative shopping results directly to consumers' desktops -- without compromising the privacy, security or smooth functioning of peoples' computers. WhenU's latest client release makes it possible to precisely target truly relevant and timely savings opportunities to individual consumers who are actively shopping for particular products while simultaneously strengthening our ability to ensure that these offers are shown only to fully opted-in consumers. WhenU's evolving business model is driven by the belief that consumers must maintain control of the desktop. People must be free to opt-in or opt-out of receiving competitive offers, and they should be able to get relevant, actionable offers without giving up their personally identifiable information and without exposing detailed records of their browsing and purchasing histories.