• by Ross Fadner , March 16, 2004

Within the ad-serving industry, refining the process of behavioral targeting is rapidly becoming a top priority for the major ad-serving networks. Today, 24/7 Real Media unveiled an industry-first analytics, behavioral targeting and ad serving technology all under one umbrella.

Publishing customers who buy the total 24/7 Real Media advertising solution will have access to behavioral targeting analytics through Insight ACT, released today, which enables targeting through audience clustering, as well as ad-serving through Open AdStream 5.7.

According to David Hills, president media solutions, 24/7 Real Media, Insight ACT links the ad-serving technology, Open AdStream, with its behavioral segmentation and targeting. "Publishers who want behavioral targeting don't have to work with multiple systems anymore," he says. Insight ACT analyzes user's behaviors and clusters them together into audience segments for targeting. The new technology also provides inventory analytics and performance reports by each targeted segment.

24/7's Hills says that behavioral targeting is part of the future of ad-serving. He notes that in TV, advertisers are used to purchasing audiences versus endemic content. "In this medium, we need to be able to sell based on audiences, too." 24/7 chairman and CEO, David J. More, adds to that in a statement: "24/7 Real Media sees the future of the industry being defined by publishers' ability to track critical audience behavior and cluster audience segments, and then, through one seamless system, serve relevant adds that drive yield for the publisher and performance for the advertiser."

Regarding the sticky issue of consumer privacy on the Internet, Hills says that the 24/7 targeting technology is "very, very adherent" to all Internet privacy policies. "We don't know you; we don't know anything about you but your attributes," he says.

Tony Schmitz, president of technology worldwide of 24/7 Real Media, believes, "this single vendor concept for all vital services will quickly become the standard in the industry." While this remains to be seen, the prospect of a one-stop shop for publishers looking to serve their advertisers a behaviorally relevant audience, is certainly enticing.

Hills forecasts that, "through these technologies, customers (advertisers) will be able to obtain better behavioral data from audiences, which will absolutely improve campaign results."