A couple of developments in the world of behavioural targeting… I’m sure a few of you are familiar with NebuAd in the US and Phorm in the UK. Both have operated targeted advertising platforms based around the inspection of internet packets that are sent between consumer’s browsers and the ISP. The idea is to monitor a user’s navigation and browsing behaviour, generate an algorithm that can predict what they’re looking for next, and to model an advertising campaign with very targetted ads. This precision in marketing will reduce inefficiencies of marketing and reduce costs. While the technology is pretty cool, it did spark off some debate when Phorm was implemented on some UK ISPs a few months back.
Recently a couple more players have entered this market…
- Akamai Technologies, have just released their Advertising Decisions Solutions platform based on the recently acquired acerno product. Akamai has been around for a while and has been powering a big proportion of the internet’s content-heavy sites for the last 10 years. My view is that Akamai has both the infrastructure and clout to make this work, and should be considered as a contender to be a market leader in this field. Quite rightly they are conscious of the anonymity of any data captured and on the privacy of any users… and have made it clear on their website that they intend to be very prudent in these areas.
- Headup is a recent startup that’s just launched a behavioural targetting ad platform, but with a more limited solution. The service requires users to pro-actively consent to being tracked but also have to download and install a browser plugin. Headup is still in private beta and requires an invite to be able to download the plugin.
Either way, behavioural targeting is beginning to become more mainstream in the online marketing world and is likely to be more accepted by users as they slowly get used to the idea…
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