Buyer behavior · Scalable user-profile inference from online surfing records; empirical customer-base/display-ad analysis and economic simulation.
Crumbs of the Cookie: User Profiling in Customer-Base Analysis and Behavioral Targeting
Marketing Science · 2016
Summary
Profiles were interpretable; internal-only data could be biased; search engines covered less activity but had higher data quality and could recover profiles; simulation showed targeting gains.
For your marketing
Possible founder application
Use as a behavioral mechanism or experiment-design reference, not a direct forecast for a SaaS funnel.
Reported result
What the study found
Profiles were interpretable; internal-only data could be biased; search engines covered less activity but had higher data quality and could recover profiles; simulation showed targeting gains.
Research question
What the authors investigated
Can online surfing data infer useful profiles for customer analysis and behavioral targeting?
Design
Scalable user-profile inference from online surfing records; empirical customer-base/display-ad analysis and economic simulation.
Sample and setting
Online activity records across search engines/advertising networks; applications to customer-base analysis and display advertising.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
Profile inference and economic gains are data/model dependent; simulation is not a randomized ad experiment.
Research sources
Publisher abstract explicitly reports empirical analysis, data-quality comparison, temporal limits and simulation. Direct publisher-page retrieval was recorded on 2026-10-09; this profile uses the publisher abstract/metadata and does not claim independent review of unavailable full text.