Tacoda will weekly screen content that appears adjacent to ads served over its behaviorally targeted online advertising network, the company announced (pdf). It has partnered with internet management solutions provider ContentWatch, which will scan the 3,500 sites in the Tacoda Audience Networks and flag those with inappropriate content for review and filtering by Tacoda.

"Our goal is to provide advertisers with a 'clean, well-lit environment' for their marketing messages," says Tacoda President & COO Curt Viebranz. "Since behaviorally targeted ads are, by design, served out of context to people rather than pages, advertisers must be reassured that their ads won't appear on pages that will in any way damage their brand."

ContentWatch provides companies such as Disney with child-protection filtering software. Its flagship ContentProtect 2.0 uses dynamic filtering analysis to filter out inappropriate content. "Now that major brands are shifting significant dollars to the Internet, we want to assure them of a positive online experience," says Ken Knapton, VP of engineering for ContentWatch.