Tacoda Systems announced the availability yesterday of pre-defined audience segments for advertisers running behavioral-targeting campaigns on publisher sites that use its ad-targeting software.
Tacoda Targets are 22 audience segments for consumer groups such as auto buyers, homebuyers and sports fans. New York-based Tacoda said it constructed the segments based on ad campaigns that have run on some of its 700 publisher Web sites, which include iVillage, BusinessWeek.com and USAToday.com.
The audience segments, which will be included in Tacoda's software, are meant to address a shortcoming of behavioral targeting: the inability of advertisers to run campaigns across a variety of sites knowing they are using the same audience criteria.
Web publishers have turned to companies like Tacoda and Revenue Science to wring more value out of lower-priced ad inventory by showing it to audience segments desired by advertisers. For instance, a publisher could use the software to serve golf-related ads to golf enthusiasts even when they are outside the golf section.
Tacoda said it believed Tacoda Targets could form the basis of industry-wide standards on segmenting audiences. The company said it would establish a committee of publishers, advertisers and industry researchers to guide development of segment standards. This could lead to guidelines blessed by an industry trade association.
Tacoda plans to launch AudienceMatch, an ad network that will show ads across several Web sites based on consumer Web behavior exhibited throughout the network.
