Behavioral targeting firm Tacoda on Tuesday announced that it will expand overseas, opening a London office and recruiting publishers to participate in its U.K.-centric behavioral ad network.

Once the U.K. network is fully operational, advertisers will be able to serve commercial messages to audience segments composed of U.S. as well as U.K. visitors, the company said. Tacoda has appointed Paul Goad to be managing director of its U.K. operation. Based in London, he will be responsible for developing publisher, client and agency relationships across the U.K. and Ireland. The U.K. is Tacoda's first overseas market.

"Since Tacoda Audience Networks launched in the U.S. just a year ago, the number of sites in the network has exploded to nearly 4,000," Curt Viebranz, Tacoda's CEO, said in a statement. "Each week Tacoda runs nearly 100 campaigns and virtually every top 100 online advertiser has run a Tacoda-enabled campaign. Now that we have consolidated our position…in the U.S., we think the time is right to start the process of expanding overseas."

"We plan to ramp up very quickly so that U.K.-based advertisers can benefit from the efficiencies of Tacoda-enabled behavioral targeting," Goad said. He joins Tacoda from TEAMtalk Media, where he was advertising and sponsorship director since March 2003. Prior to that, he worked for Ad Pepper and DoubleClick.