• by Shankar Gupta , May 4, 2006

Online ad technology firm Conducive has acquired AdZilla, a privately held company based in Vancouver, Canada that has developed a technology that can track consumer behavior on the Internet service provider level. The technology serves targeted ads without installing software, or cookies, on users' computers.

Conducive CEO Jim Waltz said the company will use AdZilla's technology, dubbed ZillaCastingT, to provide publishers and ad networks with information regarding their users. "The fundamental idea behind this is to help pretty much all stakeholders benefit from the position an ISP is in to understand the consumer's behavior," he said. "Our job here is to arm the entire advertising ecosystem with better targeting information."

ZillaCastingT works with hardware installed on-site at an Internet service provider. So far, Conducive has signed up 16 ISPs to use the device, including regional ISPs like Champion and Millennium. Sixteen of the top 30 publishers by ad traffic have also been signed, Waltz said; he declined to name any of the companies.

Robert Roker, AdZilla's chief technology officer, said that information that can be gleaned from the Internet service provider includes prior browsing behavior such as terms entered into search engines, and pages visited. He also said that the tracking data isn't linked to any personally identifiable information.