What Else Are You Interested In?

Our portfolio company, TACODA, is the leader in behavioral targeting. They are working with publishers all over the Internet.  They identify what users are interested in using a "data tag" on the publisher's page and then use that data to serve advertising that is more relevant to the user's interests.

It's a win/win/win situation. The publisher gets more revenue per page because the ads are more targeted. The advertiser gets better performing advertising campaigns. And users see ads that they are interested in.

I have been running the TACODA data tag on this blog for several months and I got some interesting data this past weekend that I'd like to share with all of you.  TACODA counted about 50,000 unique visitors to this blog in April.

And these are the interest areas that you all demonstrated as you surfed the web when you weren't on this blog.  If I was running TACODA's Audience Network on this blog, TACODA would use this data to serve up more relevant advertising to you.

Comments

[Tony Alva]

Is that Mr. Rogers singing that jingle jangle tune?

[Ric]

How is TACODA determining my interests - is it stalking me, or just detecting where I go when I leave here, or where I've come from?

[Bill]

I went to TACODA's web site, viewed their privacy policy, and opted-out. I'm just not comfortable with firms making money by telling others where I go or what I view.

I will give TACODA credit for making it easy to opt-out. Can't say the same for Behavior Link (Claria). True spyware merchants.....

[scott partee]

1. Your sitepal made me laugh out loud and almost spit espressso all over my monitor.

2. Your Mario paela picture is *killing* me.

3. Is porn filtered out of the metrics or do you just have a relatively straight-laced audience ;)

Grüsse Aus Wien!
Greetings from Vienna!

[fred]

Ric,

TACODA's data tags are on many publisher's pages all over the internet

When you visit those pages, your interest data is anonymously aggregated by TACODA so that the publishers can deliver more relevant advertising to you

TACODA is not stalking you. They have effectively set up a data coop among publishers to share data and improve ad relevance

Fred

[David G]

Awesome reporting - no Media 2.0 company should be without reporting like this. Thanks for sharing, Fred.

Funny that (non-tech) business news is lowest on the list; we're probably all missing some interesting opportunities there.

[Steve D.]

Fred,

How do you define "leading"? It was my understanding that Revenue Science was the leader in behavorial targeting. I think it might make sense to clarify to the public.

Regards,

Steve

[fred]

Steve

TACODA is the leading independent behavioral targeting service (I use the word independent because Yahoo! probably serves more behavioral ads than anyone).

I am not going to disclose confidential numbers, but TACODA sees more unique impressions and serves more behavioral ads and sells more behavioral advertising than any other provider with the possible exception of Yahoo!.

Fred

[Steve D]

Fred,

Thanks for the clarification. If Tacoda's information is confidential and Revenue Science is a private company that does not disclose financials as well, how can we (or you) substantiate your claim?

Thanks,

Steve

[brian]

fred,

I'm a not sure how valid the interest data is from the publishers. If it is registration data, then I'm sure most of the fields are bogus (i.e., 90210) as registrants have no incentive to use their actual profiles. If it is survey data (internal or third-party), then the aggreg. stats are too broad to be truly targeted/relevant. Like Nielsen numbers, there is a lot of variance in interest of people who are 18-49.

[Rick]

In the mid-1990s, we paid a crapload of money to have a study done that showed common interests of our target market. Probably cost 50k.

We essentially found that recreational boaters liked to snow ski and hard-core fishermen liked to play video games (other stuff, probably, too).

The reports looked similar to the graph up above.

It amazes me how far we've come in the last 10 years.

[David Silverman]

Fred:
do you know if Tacoda is looking at working with retailers and eCommerce platform providers leveraging the behavorial targeting for landing page optimization on an ecommerce site?

David Silverman
Director of Business Development
Demandware