Is Behavioral Targeting the Future of Social Media?

Social media has come a long way since its debut with Friendster in 2002 and MySpace in 2003. Back then, no one could have predicted the exact future of social media, not even the most forward-thinking genius. Or have they? One young entrepreneur might have understood the importance of prediction and automation a while ago…

Where it all started…

To understand the future of social media, we must understand where it all started… Gurbaksh Chahal, was only 16 years old when he dropped out of school to launch his first company: Click Agents. Click Agents was an advertising network focused on performance-based advertising. Two years later, ValueClick, now called Conversant, bought the company for 22 M$.

In 2000, at age 18, Chahal was worth over 20 million dollars. This was just the beginning… Watch the following video to understand the history and the beginning of social media.

Behavioural Targeting: Smart Thinking Behind Social Media

Programmers have been able to program social media’s thinking to be almost as predictive as the human brain. With complex algorithms, social media is now able to offer you content based on your likings. Big Brother offers you products you did not even know you wanted!

In 2004, Gurbaksh Chahal, founded Blue Lithium, a company based on behavioral targeting. Based on a user browsing history, the company was able to send targeted ads to Internet users. The predictive online ads have started a long time ago, almost at the same time as social media.

On Wikipedia, the official definition of behavioural targeting is:

“behavioral targeting uses information collected from an individual’s web-browsing behavior (e.g., the pages that they have visited or searched) to select advertisements to display”.

Chahal sold the company to Yahoo for the modest sum of 300 M$.

The journey continues with Radium One and Gravity4

When you are being so successful at such a young age with online ventures, why stop? Chahal continued his digital journey with Radium One and Gravity4.

Radium One is an online advertising platform using real-time bidding to advertise on social media platforms amongst others. Listed as one of the biggest online ad network by ComScore.

The company, commonly known as R1, is utilizing data collected from Twitter and Facebook to tailor advertisement for consumers.

On the other hand, Gravity4 describe itself as ‘The World’s First High-Frequency Marketing Cloud’. Technology at its best…

Lessons for Others

What is the future for social media? With technology changing at such a fast pace, I think no one can actually predict the exact future of social media. This being said, I think that online geniuses like Chahal can actually shape the future of social on how they want it to be. Sky has no limits…

With so many successful ventures, Gurbaksh Chahal is a company by himself! By doing some research on this the topic of the Future of Social Media, I’ve learned that technology is far ahead of what people may think. Our current present is the actual future!

Behavioral Targeting is surely part of the social media future… The Internet-of-Things is everywhere. Here is an audio to listen to about the future of marketing on social media: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/?powerpress_pinw=94816-podcast

You, what do you think is the future of social media?

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

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