AOL HAS AN EYE ON YOU
TO BUY AD TARGETER — After acquiring its way into the video and mobile ad-serving marketplace, CEO Randy Falco is moving AOL into the behavorial-targeting ad market with a deal to purchase Tacoda, The Post has learned. — Sources said AOL is paying between $200 million …
Context & Ripple Effects
AOL had already been building its advertising toolkit, including an AOL-branded white-label AdWords service, while Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL were all acquiring Internet advertising businesses amid the digital-ad boom. The reported Tacoda deal would extend that acquisition race into behavioral targeting.
The move also follows AOL and Yahoo’s difficulty shifting substantial TV upfront budgets online. Behavioral targeting gives AOL a more measurable proposition for advertisers than portal reach alone, even as a revised Nielsen methodology placed AOL and Yahoo ahead of Google among top online destinations.
First-order effects
- If completed, the reported roughly $200 million purchase would add Tacoda’s behavioral-targeting capability to AOL’s video, mobile and search-oriented advertising efforts.
- AOL advertisers would gain a route to target audiences by observed online behavior rather than relying chiefly on broad portal placements.
Second-order effects
- Yahoo, Google and Microsoft face added pressure to pair audience scale with targeting technology as advertisers compare the efficiency of their online buys.
- Tacoda’s publisher and advertiser relationships would become part of AOL’s ad-sales footprint, making targeting data and inventory access more tightly connected.
Third-order effects
- The deal signals a shift in portal competition from winning traffic rankings to assembling integrated ad-tech stacks through acquisition.
- As behavioral targeting becomes a core sales tool, online ad markets are likely to place greater value on the data generated by content consumption and browsing behavior.
The trend: Major web portals are using acquisitions to combine audience reach, behavioral data and ad-serving capabilities into more accountable advertising products.