WebProNews

So as the dust settles on the recent acquisitions in the ad serving market, with WPP buying 24/7 Real Media, Google buying DoubleClick, Microsoft buying aQuantive, AOL buying AdTech and Yahoo buying Right Media – what has really happened?

The answer is that these acquisitions indicate that rich media and targeted display advertising is the way forward and that the tipping point has now been reached away from TV to the Web and mobile.

These acquistions are both protective and aggressive – giving WPP, Google, Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo the ability to place ads on sites other than its own, measure the effectiveness of these ads and also target advertising based on users search queries, surfing habits and response to advertisements - behavioral targeting is coming of age. With the addition of huge resources now being made available to what was once was an ad serving cottage industry, one can assume rapid innovation and development.

Some consumer and privacy groups say the growing ability to collect information online is eroding privacy. Companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo already collect data about users through their e-mail accounts, search queries and online calendars. Will these companies combine their data with the cookie and click stream analysis gathered by their new acquired ad serving firms to create detailed profiles on users Internet and search interests. The companies say that the data is anonymous and that users have the ability to opt out of having data collected about them, though privacy experts say that few people know they have that option, the advertisers also say that behavioral targeting will benefit consumers as it will target relevant advertising and not irrelevant junk to them, so giving the web user a better service.

An example of this is a consumer thinking of buying a car and visiting Yahoo Autos and looking at a Range Rover sport-utility vehicle, when the consumer leaves the page, checks Yahoo e-mail, Yahoo Sports and Yahoo stock quotes and logs off, these visits are tracked by a cookie. The next time the consumer is back on Yahoo Sports, Yahoo's proprietary behavioral-targeting platform can serve an ad for the SUV on that site. What ad serving companies do is segment their Web site partners' audiences into categories of users like car buyers, mountain bike enthusiasts, wine buffs, new mothers and then segment further, based on geography, sex and other criteria.
However what they lack is the ability to analyse and understand the actual financial position of a consumer, imagine the advantage of knowing if an online user has a good credit rating, is a homeowner and earns over $100k per year.

Perhaps the next stage of behavioral targeting is to integrate consumer credit and marketing information. Experian maintains more detailed information about consumers than any single competitor in the information industry and operate 14 consumer credit bureaux and seven business credit bureaux around the world, with information on approximately 300 million consumers and 30 million businesses. They also compile and manage data on the histories of 600 million vehicles in the US and the UK, on 30 million insurance policies in the UK, on the catalogue purchasing habits of 110 million households in the US and consumer marketing information in respect of 130 million households globally.

So to gain competitive advantage, who will buy Experian? Will it be WPP, Google, Microsoft, AOL or Yahoo?