• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 14, 2005

In its latest attempt to claim a larger share of the behavioral targeting industry, Revenue Science will create a five-publisher network, across which it serve branding ads to visitors, based on their Web-surfing behavior.

For the network, which will start on a pilot basis in several weeks, Revenue Science has secured 2 million impressions from each of the participating publishers, said Nick Johnson, senior vice president of business development. The company will work with research firm Insight Express to measure any changes in awareness or purchase intent among visitors exposed to the ads.

Currently, Revenue Science provides 90 publishers with behavioral targeting services, but only serves ads to visitors based on their behavior on the site they're currently visiting. For instance, an online subscriber of the Wall Street Journal who clicks on the newspaper's travel-related articles might be served with travel ads, but only while on the Journal site.

Under the new program, if a visitor at a participating publisher's site is tagged as a potential traveler, Revenue Science might serve that person with travel ads at all five of the sites in the network.

The publisher that provides the information that led Revenue Science to classify the consumer into a certain bucket will receive a portion of the ad fee -- a flat cost-per-thousand impression rate, Johnson said. The company now is reaching out to agencies in an attempt to sign up between 10 and 12 advertisers for the test run, he added.

Tacoda, a behavioral targeting company that competes with Revenue Science, launched a similar network for branding campaigns in March. As with Revenue Science's model, publishers who provide the data that allows Tacoda to classify visitors are compensated, said David Morgan, Tacoda's CEO.

Separately, WorldNow, which provides Internet technology for local media sites, tapped Revenue Science for behavioral targeting services. WorldNow in January announced a deal with Tacoda for behavioral targeting, but Tacoda never deployed its platform across the WorldNow sites, according to Morgan.