I’ve always been suspicious of behavioral targeting (BT), not in the way the government is (re: privacy). I have always doubted that publishers would randomly trust a third party with gathering and analyzing all of that data on their audience. This is why Tacoda sold to AOL, it makes sense for AOL to own that technology for its own sites and the additional reach on Advertising.com, but when I ran sales, I wasn’t rushing to embrace BT technologies.
I think while some VCs might make the argument that: “the government could make monetization even harder for online ad networks and publishers through limiting their ability to do behavioral targeting”, it is an overly-simplistic perspective. Trust me, what makes advertisers hesitate to spend money online isn’t a lack of data, it’s a lack of good content. continue reading...
When I was a VP of Ad Sales, I used to get a lot of calls from Revenue Science, Tacoda, and another behavioral targeting firm whose name I can’t quite recall… the concept was great, problem was, I could not imagine many publishers jumping on it: a lot of promise, not much substance early on. And let’s face it, publishers want instant gratification.
I’m not alone in that assessment: “According to eMarketer (June 2007), the behavioral targeting market is set to increase to $3.8 billion by 2011, from $350 million in 2006,” says the press release touting the match made in heaven. continue reading...
Yahoo! today announced the launch of SmartAds, a new behavioral targeting (BT) tool that will help it boost rates and offer more targeting to its advertising clients.
By doing so, it both deals a blow and injects a shot in the arm to the many BT firms out there: Tacoda, Revenue Science to name a few. continue reading...
