CBS MarketWatch: And you thought pop-up ads were bad

ICQ Co-Founder, Yair Goldfinger is one of the people behind Dotomi, an Israeli-based company that's working on extending the instant messaging technologies developed by ICQ into an advertising platform that helps advertisers deliver 'spot-on' personalized advertising on a per user basis.

Imagine for a moment that the Bud advertisement you often see on MarketWatch suddenly begins to talk to you, or presents a message from a friend that reads: "Party, Friday, at Joe's, be there. And, umm, bring beer."

Or, it can be from Anheuser-Busch: "Remember Joe's party; bring beer; How ’bout Bud? Click here and you get 30 percent off, plus free delivery."

It only requires time, effort, and permission on the part of the user, but, it's still a long way off. The idea is interesting nonetheless. Dotomi thinks they can use personally identifiable information to truly deliver individualized messages to users, but if you remember back to the DoubleClick "settlement last May of federal and state lawsuits for violating privacy of Web surfers, [there] was a requirement to obtain permission from consumers before combining personally identifiable data and Web surfing history" and in today's day and age of privacy concerns, it might be tough for Dotomi to really get off the ground legitimately.