Behavioural Targeting

The interactive nature of the web lends itself to reaching and communicating with audiences in highly effective ways. For example, consumers search on keywords they are interested in finding more about; it only makes sense that ads shown on the pages they view should reflect those interests and be reasonably relevant to the user.

Similarly, what advertisers really want is to show their ads to the people who are most likely to be interested in what they're communicating - to target people and not pages.

That's where behavioural targeting and Phorm advertising come in. By working with ISPs, Phorm is able to target advertisements to consumers based on their browsing behaviour. Because Phorm uses more data than other companies, our online behavioral targeting is likely to be more exact. And also unlike other companies, Phorm uses channel matching rather than storing the search terms and page keywords themselves, which is a unique method that preserves users' privacy.

The typical approach to behaviour targeting, as used by major Internet companies, works by collecting and keeping as much data on a consumer as possible. (Indeed, these companies store the data for at least a year before they even anonymise it). This information on search behavior is used to build up a picture about individual users from which a consumer's interests can be inferred and a relevant ad can be shown.

Phorm, on the other hand, is able to deliver highly accurate targeted ads because our software works at the network level and has privacy-friendly processes for matching ads to consumers' interests.

As someone browses online, Phorm matches his or her searching or browsing behaviour against pre-defined advertising categories for everyday products, like travel or sport, by looking at URLs, search terms or the 10 most frequently occurring keywords on the page being visited. The raw data used to make the match is deleted in real time -- by the time the page loads - so that no personally identifiable data is stored. In fact, there is no information stored other than a random number that anonymises users and its associated ad categories and the time/date record. In addition, Phorm's behavioral advertising is based on a clear opt in and opt out privacy policy so that consumers are always in control of their personal data.