From Google's post:
".... From now on, you'll sometimes see ads matched to another recent email instead. For example, let's say you're looking at a message from a friend wishing you a happy birthday. If there aren't any good ads for birthdays, you might see the Chicago flight ads related to your last email instead.
To show these ads, our systems don't need to store any extra information – Gmail just picks a different recent email to match. The process is entirely automated: no humans are involved in selecting ads, and no email or personal information is shared with advertisers. ...." |
I wouldn't call this behavioral targeting. Gmail caches recent ads and it shows them when it can't find good contextual ads.
"Behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual's web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select which advertisements to display to that individual. Practitioners believe this helps them deliver their online advertisements to the users who are most likely to be interested." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_targeting) |
Nothing new. This is exactly what they had before, except if they can't find a relevent ad they use an ad that would have matched a previous email |
I think this is actually quite new. As the Google post says, Google previously explicitly stated that they only targeted the current message. Targeting past reading behavior is a big move toward personalized advertising. |