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Advertising - Tuesday, July 24, 2007

AOL Acquires Behavioral Targeting Ad Network Tacoda For As Much As $300M

AOL has paid $300-400M for New York-based behavioral ad network Tacoda. As it happens, there has been much discussion in the blogosphere about when the time will come for behavioral networks to get there time in the sun. Next up: Revenue Science. Hats off to Contextweb for jumping on the story with their viewpoints. Says ContextWeb's Jay Sears:
"The Tacoda deal will help solidify AOL’s Advertising.com’s domination in behavioral targeting and performance based display ads. Advertising.com has the largest reach of any ad network and works with 3,000 publishers and all the large direct response advertisers. Let’s see what folks report re valuation multiples since this one seems closer to a 24/7 multiple than a RightMedia or aQuantive multiple. It looks like AOL made a great deal."

The ContextWeb'ers rightly point out that consolidation in online advertising has focused on Tier A publishers, not the long tail.

Read - AOL’s Randy Falco Loves Cookies; Paying $200-300M for Tacoda – What It All Means (ContextWeb)