• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, July 9, 2012

Yahoo today went live with Genome, the audience analytics service it announced in May during Internet Week that stems from its $270 million acquisition of interclick last November. The platform promises to help marketers deliver highly-targeted campaigns based on user data (including search) from Yahoo’s audience of 700 million combined with third-party data from interclick and advertiser data, among other sources.

By tapping into “big data” through Genome, advertisers would have the ability to build precise audience profiles and make more efficient media buys, as well as gain preferred access to inventory across Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft, and the top 1,000 comScore sites.

“Genome eats Big Data for lunch---literally,” stated a Yahoo blog post today. “It takes in more data from more sources than other solutions, then analyzes and decodes it to create multi-dimensional views of customers that help define the best target audiences for ad campaigns.” 

Among existing Yahoo clients signing on to use Genome for creating targeted campaigns are BMW and STP, with the data and analytics service expected to become a key part of every brand’s relationship with the Web portal. With the rollout of Genome, Yahoo also said it’s retiring interclick as a separate brand.