FTC might want to rake Google over the coals for buying DoubleClick, but one thing can’t be denied: that deal started a massive consolidation in the ad-network market. Good news is that everything is being snapped up. Like AOL’s $275 million buyout of TACODA, a company that is buzzword compliant.
Behavioral targeting is TACODA’s sales pitch. AOL’s justification: it can work with Advertising.com, and eMarketer’s forecast: behavioral targeting market is set to increase to $3.8 billion by 2011, from $350 million in 2006.When we used TACODA as a backfill for our network, it was rather shitty. You remember those Jenny Craig ads! Great targeting… yeah!
I’ve had a similar experience with the “second tier” ad networks. Who knows if their technology actually does what it says (in Tacoda’s case, tracking your browsing habits and serving relevant ads), but my view is that they probably don’t attract enough ad buyers buying enough inventory to serve the best suited ads most of the time.
Good point Adam, though it was a disaster in our case. Oh well, thanks for sharing you experience.
Never even heard of Tacoda.
Most ad networks (who sell non-premium ad space) seem to work better for sites with a mainstream audience as opposed to niche tech blogs. Likely because their pool of ad clients usually seek mainstream audiences. It will be interesting to see what combining Ad.com and Tacoda can do for AOL. If they can bring in additional advertisers, probably quite a bit.
We have used TACODA for a number of years as backfill and have had extremely good success and, our eCPM has been far greater than what we typically yield with the traditional ad networks. I have seen nothing but quality ads from some of the top brand advertisers in the USA. We currently have TACODA configured in the number 2 position and if they cannot serve an ad, they then pass the request to one of our other remnant providers. Of the many third party networks out there, TACODA is definitely in a league of their own – setting the standard for behavioral targeting and surpassing any of the other networks we have worked with.