AdWeek: AQuantive Enters Behavioral Targeting Space

aQuantive announced it will create an Engage-like contextual ad network, buying up inventory from sellers to repackage it and sell it to advertisers in batches tied to user profiles. The profiles will include past surfing behavior, demographics and geographic information. The DRIVEpm system will be offered in cost-per-action, cost-per-click and CPM pricing formats. While the division has already launched, aQuantive said it doesn't expect a major impact from it on its financials, perhaps indicating that it doesn't see the product as ready for large scale use for some quarters.

The product is rather similar to one launched by Engage just prior to the heady late '90s. That product suffered a lack of buyer sophistication, an irrational market concerned with gross impressions more than efficiency, technology problems and, perhaps most troubling today, privacy concerns. An aQuantive representative told CNET that the privacy concerns would be allayed by keeping "personal information - such as names, phone numbers and addresses - private." Um, yes.

The aQuantive announcement caused a rush in the industry to reveal contextual advertising plans. In a related story, Tacoda Systems pre-announced its soon-to-be-launched division that hopes to produce a similar user profile network that will offer contextual advertising system much like those of Overture and Google.

The division further puts aQuantive in the funny position of being both buyer, seller and service provider for advertisers. In the past, these conflicts have presented a problem for the holding company, even causing lost business.