Behavioral targeting has been one of the most promising avenues explored to optimize online advertising efficiency. Some behavioral targeting ad networks, such as Revenue Science and Tacoda, have built a business model around identifying web visitors’ browsing patterns (and implied interests and buying intents) and delivering relevant ads.

Because privacy concerns continue to percolate through the industry (both NebuAd and Phorm have battled privacy advocates, mostly because both firms have collaborated with ISPs to gather user data), there has been plenty of discussion about how to achieve the promise of BT without it spiraling into a PR nightmare for the ad networks involved. One company seems to have a solution, by decoupling user behavior data from ad serving.

Startup BlueKai, founded by some ex-Revenue Science folks (they are based in Seattle, as is RS), has developed an behavioral data exchange, in which aggregate user data can be bought and sold by advertisers and Web publishers. It is similar to list aggregators in the offline world, although, because the data is far richer and more reliant on behavioral data than demographic, user lists can be sliced and diced in many more ways. Buyers effectively buy a cookie associated with a profile targeted by the buyer, who might have searched for a certain class of product or service of interest to the BlueKai client.

Data on users who have visited video sites, or looked for information on hybrid cars, can be collated and sold, for instance, to video ad networks or online car retailers, for instance. In fact, Autobytel and Tremor are two of BlueKai’s first partners.

How does BlueKai avoid trespassing on privacy concerns?

• user data can not be resold
• user data expires within one month of purchase
• users can manage their individual profiles, granting full opt-out privileges, by accessing a registry hosted by BlueKai
• users who do participate are rewarded by a donation to a charity

Tremor’s and Autobytel’s experience using BlueKai will likely be watched carefully. Regulators’, and their constituents’, sensitivity around advertiser overreach won’t necessarily make BlueKai’s sell particularly easy.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Online Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.