One of the major achievements of behavioral marketing has been to allow advertisers to expand from an excessively singular focus on WHERE ads run to an emphasis on the more important question of HOW to get the right message to the right people, regardless of where they are online. Just because behavioral marketers can reach a prospect literally anywhere, David Cooperstein, of Burst Media explains, doesn’t mean that choice of context for placement has become unimportant or irrelevant.

While much of behavioral targeting involves profiling usage patterns and content types into segmented buckets (auto intenders and the like), a more abstract and mechanical testing approach can also optimize performance, without our knowing much at all about the personality or past usage history of a visitor. Web site testing and personalization company Amadesa has deployed its testing approach to shopping cart optimization by creating what it calls “virtual layers” on top of a given page that can test a large range of variants on the fly.

Most speculation about the potential of enhanced targeting and personalization of video advertising has centered around emerging platforms like IP video and even mobile video. Gidi Gilboa, advertising solutions marketing manager for NDS, explains how advertisers looking for practical targeting enhancements in the here and now can tap the rich targeting possibilities of such old-school technologies as the set-top box and DVR.

Joe Apprendi has seen this movie before. The CEO of ad network and platform Collective Media saw online ad bubbles, booms and busts several times since the mid-90s. With a bio that includes executive positions with K2 Digital, 24/7 Media, Eyeblaster, Klipmart and Falk eSolution, Apprendi remains one of our go-to guys for putting yet another online media crisis into historical perspective. In our ongoing series of interviews with CEOs of major behavioral technology and ad service firms, Apprendi compares this downturn with the last and argues that companies pursuing “audience-centric” ad targeting will be in the best position to weather this storm and catch the next wave of media buying.

For all the excitement mobile advertising has generated, the negative rap against it has been that it can neither scale nor provide targeting, especially behavioral, at scale. Bob Walczak, CEO of Ringleader Digital (formerly Mophap) outlines a roadmap for bringing not only mobile but all of emerging digital media to parity with online targeting.

The challenges of tracking, tagging and targeting mobile users is legendary. As Ed Moore, Product Marketing Strategist for Openwave, explains, the technical differences between standard Web-based browsing and mobile access to data are substantial. Openwave has been a longtime supplier of infrastructure solutions to major carriers, which gives the company a unique ISP-level view of all the usage patterns on a network.

Variety may be the spice of life, but in marketing — as in the real world — habit often limits options and possibilities far more than needed. To truly optimize the advantages of all the rich, diverse targeting data generated by customers online, marketers should expand their options by integrating targeted content with continuous real-time multi-variable testing, Mark Wachen, managing director of Optimost at Interwoven, explains.

Clothing sizes for women are notoriously, maddeningly arbitrary. Two years ago, myShape.com launched its personalized shopping service for women that matches clothing to very specific shapes and sizes. Several months ago, the site added to the personalized shopping service a recommendation engines from Baynote that layers into the member’s view items that other viewers of specific products also considered. We spoke with myShape’s Mercedes De Luca, customer experience and chief information officer, about layering recommendations with personalization — and the kinds of novel services that might evolve from this combination.

In everyday life we’re all intuitively aware that the interpreting what people’s behavioral cues mean depends a lot on our understanding of who they are. This lesson, Keith Richman, CEO of Break Media, explains, should be taken to heart by brands hoping to target the most avid and active consumers of online video, males 18 to 34.

In many ways, online behavioral targeting merely formalizes techniques that direct marketers have used for ages. Motivated by the high costs of mailings, catalogers learned long ago how to track customer ordering habits and adjust their mailings accordingly. While email marketers enjoy low distribution costs, a poor understanding of customer interactions can lead to costly opt-outs and missed sales opportunities says Steve Webster, vice president of sales/co-founder of iPost. He tells us today how tried and true catalog marketing principles are applied to email in the company’s new AutoTarget 2.0 release.