ClickZ: Behavioral Targeting: Then and Now

Tacoda CEO Dave Morgan writes convincingly why, this time around, behavioral targeting won't be just a flash in the pan. While many trendy marketing concepts come and go in the ADD world of Internet marketing, perhaps the strongest and most beguiling concept to come and leave was the late-90's effort by a couple companies to profile millions of users based on web behavior. This holy grail of targeting seemed within reach, but marketers never bought into it.

Morgan things four things are quite different today: timing is better (i.e., 90s marketing spending was "dumb money"); early products were over-hyped; the technology is far better today; and the business models available today are more friendly to companies, allowing marketers, for instance, to own their own data.