• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, October 10, 2008

This week, the Behavioral Targeting Standards Consortium (BTSC), announced an Advisory Board of nine BT experts to help guide the group's mission to establish industry-wide principles and standards for behavioral targeting. Jeff Hirsch is CEO of Revenue Science, the group's founding member and driving force. We took the opportunity to catch up with Hirsch and discuss both the role of the BTSC and the role of BT in the evolving world of ad networks.

Behavioral Insider: You started the BTSC last year. What is the initiative about and where does it stand?

Jeff Hirsch: Obviously, there is a lot of concern around privacy issues, and we think those are valid conversations to have. We support the IAB's efforts and NAI, and we'll be there to adhere to whatever standards we design. What we have seen, though, is that just dealing with the privacy issues on BT is not handling all the business issues in the space.

Whenever there is a new paradigm such as video or social networking or behavioral targeting, a lot of people jump on the bandwagon. The good thing is it stimulates the market. The bad thing is that it also confuses the market. Now with so many companies offering BT, when we went out to speak to agencies or publishers no one had a common ground to stand on in that conversation. Normally I think this would be taken up by the IAB in that standards group. They are very busy and we felt that we could stimulate the conversation by sponsoring this organization. The response has been overwhelming -- over 240 members now, and a lot of interest in trying to get at some common language and allow people to talk apples to apples.

BI: Can you tease out one or two of the prominent ambiguities you encounter in the market?

Hirsch: There's another component, data -- and what data is okay to use, and how people access the data, whose data it is. A very simple one is retargeting. It is certainly a form of behavioral targeting, and we support that and offer that as well. But we see many companies that offer retargeting call it behavioral targeting. It certainly is part of BT. We don't have any issue with that. But if you label that as doing BT, you are just limiting the scope of what you offer and limiting the understanding of that client around what they are participating in.

BI: Where are the biggest sources of conflict in the market over who owns the data? Is this an issue waiting to blow up?

Hirsch: There is potential for it to blow up. Ad networks went through a phase which [has] now driven them towards transparency of inventory - where the ads are going to run. And that was driven by advertisers finding their ads in places they didn't expect.

I think there is the potential for the same thing to occur on the data side. An advertiser may find out their ad was targeted in using data that perhaps they didn't feel was an appropriate way to use that data. And there will be some repercussions from that.

I am not necessarily talking about illegal. I use the word 'inappropriate' for a reason, because they haven't defined it. Revenue Science believes that if a publisher is creating content on their site, they have created an asset in their audience. They have traditionally sold that asset by selling inventory on that page, but they have also created an asset in that they have generated data around a user's interests or intent. And they should get paid for that asset as well.

When Revenue Science uses data, we have specific contractual agreement with the publishers that provide that. We tie it back through their privacy policies and we pay them a revenue share when their data is utilized. Not everyone does that. Does everyone have to? That remains to be discussed, and I think it should be an open discussion. I believe... that data has value and if you are not compensating the people who created it, that should be a business issue that should be openly understood.

BI: You mentioned that the BTSC had attracted hundreds of member already.

Hirsch: There were 240 members and probably over 200 companies: portals, networks, publishers, hardware manufacturer. Go to btstandards.org. Originally we were overwhelmed by the reponse and didn't anticipate so many people being involved. We have now made sure to formalize this as an independent organization with a separate board of advisors, creating working groups to focus on the specific topics. We're having quarterly general membership calls. There will be groups around issues like language/lexicon, data and education.

BI: Will industry standards in BT also extend to things like standardized audience segments, which still seems to be high on media buyers' wish lists for this targeting approach?

Hirsch: I think we have to be careful in that there will be multiple flavors that are viable. What we need to speak to is the components that make up these segments. If you are talking about an 'auto intender,' is that [defined by] a visit to a car site? Is it using a lease calculator around a car or a car configurator? What would make that up? Should it be one event or multiple events? Is there additional value to adding multiple layers onto how you define that audience?

But you have to start at the bottom. What does the data mean that you are collecting, and then how do you combine that data together to create a viable audience segment? And I think terms like auto intender are thrown around very loosely by many companies, and agencies need to ask the question, what does this mean? What is your recipe for an auto intender? And the sellers need to be willing to answer the questions. That doesn't mean disclosing every single place where you generate the data, but the type of data you are using.

BI: We have seen an explosion of vertical ad networks this year. How does a BT technology like Revenue Science's fit into that picture where the audiences have already been pared down contextually?

Hirsch: Vertical networks are designed to capture a specific audience based on vertical relevant content. It is certainly viable. But there is a limit to how much inventory is available on these sites when you are trying to reach that audience. BT is about creating audience vertical networks, so you are capturing the information about [users] by their visit and actions in those sites and then reaching them off site as well. You extend your ability to reach them in context or not. So I think they are complementary. As long as the quality of the source of data is there for us, we are working with any of those kinds of publishers and or networks to collect data. We do not license our BT technology to other networks. We feel that our significant market advantage is being able to have the kinds of capabilities we have with our technology to offer to advertisers. We keep that to ourselves.

BI: It has been more than a year since AOL bought Tacoda, and we have seen even more consolidation with Yahoo and BlueLithium. Are there still advantages to being independent?

Hirsch: When those things were happening, BT was really just beginning to pick up steam. The amount of interest we have in BT has multiplied exponentially. Remaining an independent player during this time of rapid growth has been extremely beneficial to us. The way I look at BT is, if you think back 10 years ago, geo-targeting was the premium people would pay extra to get. Now, if you can't geo-target you can't really get a buy. And I think BT is going to end up being that kind of a play. Why would people want to waste ad dollars? Right now being independent, and having the ability to work with many different data providers and advertisers, and maintaining our core publisher base that we originally built with our technology solution business, has been a huge advantage.