Today marks the launch of Akamai's Advertising Decisions Solutions, which will work with existing clients to "apply behavioral-targeting layers to ad campaigns," reports Advertising Age.

To serve as the foundation for its ad platform, Akamai recently acquired Acerno, a predictive modeling business, for $95 million. Acerno tracks what users buy on a number of ecommerce sites, then uses an algorithm to predict what they might buy next — and serve ads accordingly.

Akamai — which helps publishers efficiently deliver web content — already has the technology to "sense" what a person is reading — say, for example, a product review — then target that him with an ad for a related product. It can also gauge when users place a product in an online shopping cart, then fail to convert. Across relevant sites, ads for the abandoned items can pursue the potential customer almost relentlessly.

Its hope for the awkwardly-named Advertising Decisions Solutions is to incorporate Acerno's technology into its existing capabilities, making it possible to serve ads against what users want today — and what they might want tomorrow.

Akamai shall offer the service to publishers, ad networks and advertisers, taking a cut of revenue gleaned from purchases resulting from the ads.