Behavioral targeting

Behavioral targeting is a marketing method that uses information about what users do to decide which content, message, offer, or product experience they should see.

Instead of targeting people only by static characteristics such as age, location, subscription type, or account status, behavioral targeting considers actions: products viewed, searches made, features used, purchases completed, content opened, messages clicked, games played, onboarding steps finished, or how frequently someone returns to an app. Adjust's Mobile App Trends 2025 highlights hyper-personalization, behavioral targeting, loyalty, and omnichannel experiences among important areas for marketers to work on.

For example, an e-commerce app might show a Story about running products to users who repeatedly browse sportswear. A banking app might display a bottom sheet explaining investments to customers who have visited the investment section several times but have not opened an account. An inactive customer might receive a push notification designed to bring them back.

Purpose of Behavioral Targeting

The purpose of behavioral targeting is to make marketing and product communication more relevant by responding to demonstrated behavior. A new user who has not completed onboarding needs different communication from an active customer. Someone who repeatedly views a product category represents a different opportunity from someone who purchased yesterday. A user who has never opened a particular feature should not necessarily receive the same message as someone who has tried it several times but failed to complete the core action.

McKinsey's 2025 analysis of personalized marketing recommends more granular segmentation around lifecycle stages of acquisition, retention, repeat purchase, and churn risk. It also describes using purchase frequency, product preferences, engagement history, and preferred channels to make promotions more relevant.

Types of Behavioral Data

Product Usage

Product usage shows what customers actually do inside the app. Useful signals include: feature usage, completed actions, skipped steps, session frequency, repeated workflows, and inactive periods. This information can support onboarding, upselling, retention, and churn prevention, and feature adoption.

Browsing and Search Behavior

Products, categories, content, searches, saved items, or app sections can indicate current interests. Repeated behavior usually provides a stronger signal than one isolated action. Looking at a product once and returning to it five times should not necessarily be treated identically.

Purchase Behavior

Transactions can show category preferences, purchase frequency, average spend, product combinations, or likely repeat-purchase cycles.

Behavioral Targeting in Mobile Apps

A mobile app gives teams several communication formats, each suited to different behavioral signals:

Stories

Stories work well when users need visual explanation, product discovery, education, or several connected pieces of information. For example:

• users who browse one product category repeatedly can see a personalized product Story;
• customers who have not tried a new feature can receive a short tutorial;
• users who answered a poll can see different follow-up content according to their response;
• loyalty members can receive Stories about benefits they have not used.

Stories are useful when the behavioral signal indicates interest but the user still needs context before taking action.

Pop-Ups

Pop-ups are more intrusive and should generally be reserved for stronger behavioral signals: a retail app might show a limited-time offer after repeated interest in the same category, a subscription app might explain a premium plan when a user reaches a free-plan limitation, and a fintech app might surface an important action after the customer repeatedly abandons the same process.

Because pop-ups interrupt the current experience, behavioral targeting should help ensure that the interruption is justified by the user's context rather than applied to everyone.

Full-Screen Messages

Full-screen messages can be used when the communication is important enough to require more attention: incomplete onboarding, major account actions, important product changes, personalized campaign launches, or high-priority offers.

Behavioral rules are especially important here because a full-screen message shown to the wrong user creates substantially more friction than a passive banner.

Banners

Banners are useful when the targeted communication should stay visible without interrupting the session. A banner could promote:

• a category the customer frequently browses;
• a new feature relevant to the user's existing behavior;
• a personalized promotion;
• an ongoing campaign;
• an in-app game.

This makes banners useful for persistent behavioral targeting. The user can act when ready rather than being forced to respond immediately.

In-App Games

Behavior can also determine who sees an in-app game and what role the game plays. For example, a retailer might invite loyalty members to a seasonal game, target an interactive campaign to customers who have not purchased recently, or use previous game participation to distinguish returning players from first-time participants.

Games can support product discovery, loyalty, repeat visits, rewards, and seasonal campaigns. But participation itself is only an engagement metric. If the objective is retention or revenue, teams should also examine whether players return, redeem rewards, purchase, or continue using the app afterward.

Push Notifications

Push notifications perform a different job because they reach users outside the active app session. Although it's a useful tool to bring users back to the app, its effectiveness declines over time. Behavioral triggers can include:

• an abandoned cart;
• a price change;
• inactivity;
• an expiring reward;
• an unfinished application;
• an upcoming booking.

User abandons a purchase → push reminder → app opens → personalized bottom sheet → checkout

Best Practices of Behavioral Targeting

1. Connect behavior to a specific business goal. Decide whether the campaign is intended to improve activation, engagement, feature adoption, conversion, retention, repeat purchases, or LTV.

2. Choose the format according to the context. Use Stories for visual explanation, pop-ups for stronger calls to action, bottom sheets for contextual guidance, full-screens for important experiences, banners for persistent visibility, games for interactive campaigns, and push notifications for reactivation outside the app.

3. Consider recency and frequency. Recent and repeated behavior usually deserves more weight than an isolated action months ago.

4. Use suppression rules. Stop messages when the customer has already completed the desired action.

5. Personalize the next step. Clicking, ignoring, completing, abandoning, or returning should be able to move users into different flows.