• by Mitch Oscar , Op-Ed Contributor, May 22, 2007

These past 4 weeks we have been witnessing a slew of acquisition activity in the online sector -- a reported $10.5 billion:

The goal of these acquirers and acquirees is to create entities/platforms that deliver the right ad to the right person at the right time across myriad of sites through the marriage of display ads (video, text), search queries, analysis of Web user surfing patterns/behavior, segmentation and addressability, relevance, interactivity and the ability to offer advertisers an easy solution to accomplish the aforementioned -- the proverbial one-stop shop.

Haven't heard or seen any red flags waved by our federal agencies about privacy violations or vertical antitrust overlaps of delivering ads, auctioning advertising inventory, the exploitation of personally identifiable user information (behavioral and lifestyle) and the lack of engagement of third-party verification entities. In fact, if my short-term memory serves me well, the only companies to protest the new alliances were those entities thwarted in their acquisitorial ambitions.

Yet the cable, satellite and teleco systems operators are still shackled by regulations that forbid them -- and dictate onerous fines -- to measure viewing behavior, program search queries, provide analysis of channel and platform usage patterns/ behavior (TV, broadband and telephonic), segmentation and addressability, relevance, interactivity and the ability to marry subscriber information with datamining sources to deliver the right ad to the right TV set-top box at the right time across myriad of channels to offer advertisers an easy solution to accomplish the aforementioned -- the proverbial one-stop shop.

Surely what's good for the online goose should be good for the cable, satellite and teleco ganders.