• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, October 21, 2008

Content delivery giant Akamai Technologies has reached an agreement to acquire ad network acerno for $95 million in cash. With the approval of acerno's stockholders, the deal is expected to close later this quarter, the companies said Tuesday.

"Our investment in developing the Advertising Decision Solutions line over the past two years and acquiring acerno today, represent a strategic next step for Akamai," said Paul Sagan, president and CEO of Akamai.

Acerno has been in operation for more than two years, building a network that now reaches nearly 100% of U.S. online shoppers, according to eMarketer. In April, it debuted some behaviorally predictive ad-targeting technology to distinguish itself in a crowded ad network market.

The New York-based company is expected to enhance Akamai's Advertising Decision Solutions, a new product line also announced Tuesday that was designed to help online ad buyers and sellers create better audience segments with adequate scale.

Acerno's technology will incorporate real-time anonymous Web browsing information with anonymous online purchasing data from advertisers' sites. As a result, publishers should be able to provide advertisers with better access to relevant consumers.

"Our combined capabilities with acerno should benefit the ecosystem of ad networks, online publishers and Internet advertisers by providing them with real-time, actionable data to serve more relevant marketing messages," said Mike Afergan, Akamai's chief technology officer and SVP of Advertising Decision Solutions.

Using cookies, acerno's network collects anonymous information from over 375 major online multichannel retail Web sites. Yet, to protect against privacy concerns, the information it collects is tagged with an ID that cannot be cross-referenced to an individual's personal information.

While "cookie" remains a dirty word among some privacy advocates, using them to collect consumer behavior online has evolved into a mainstream business practice.

Ad networks are now benefiting from the increased use of such behavioral targeting, along with evidence of positive lifts in advertising.

Behavioral targeting is expected to reach $3.8 billion by 2011, according to eMarketer. A study by J.P. Morgan and comScore in 2007 predicted that global spending on ad networks would exceed $3 billion this year.

Acerno also boasts an impressive executive roster, beginning with its CEO Tom Sperry, who previously served as general manager of aQuantive's Avenue A digital agency and president of its technology and service unit, Atlas.

COO David Hinton previously was with Microsoft, where he was most recently responsible for global oversight of revenue strategy and yield management at MSN.