I wrote in that blog and repeat here that I've never been comfortable with the way the industry is defining behavioral... well, behavioral anything, actually. It seems the industry is collecting a bunch of action and result pairs, let's call them "Xs to Ys", and labeling them as a behavior.
I have trouble with that and here's why. Behaviors are not action and result pairs, to me. I would yield that in the commonest sense of the word, "behavioral" can be used in the current paradigm and have meaning. But "common meaning is accurate meaning" is a falsehood in this case, don't you think? I wrote in Anil Batra's blog that part of the difference (again, to me) involves differentiating the manner in which something is done and the fact that it is done. Consider this quote from ScienceNews:
"Consider that hale and hearty coworker. He may cozy up to lots of folks because he loves social contact and craves his peers’ approval. Or perhaps his chummy behavior masks discomfort around others and a deep-seated need to manipulate them for his own ends. If the latter proves true, is he more shy than gregarious, or vice versa?"
The quote above points to the missing piece in the behavioral blah blah blah. Marketers need to understand why something is happening in order to generate revenue from the fact that it happens.Yes, the scalability argument can be made here, but when the big players are fighting over tenths of percentage points, doesn't it make sense to investigate why that one sheep keeps on getting lost? After all, you already own the flock.
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