Tacoda and Rev Sci Swap Clients

Looks like the behavioral targeting wars are still on. Today Tacoda announced it has snatched up Dow Jones, a longtime client of its rival, Revenue Science. Tacoda also announced USAToday.com, which has used its site-side behavioral targeting technology, has joined its ad network. USAToday.com publisher Gannett uses Revenue Science to enable behavioral targeting across its sites.

And to make things more confusing, USAToday.com is starting to integrate Revenue Science’s site-side targeting system, according to Marla R. Schimke, VP of marketing at Rev Sci.

Tacoda is no longer offering its site-side targeting technology. However, according to Tacoda Chairman Dave Morgan, Dow Jones is using the company’s new packaged technology offered to network members, which allows site-specific targeting. “We see it as a network service,” Morgan told me earlier today. Essentially, the newly-developed technology takes into consideration data from other sites in the Tacoda network, but only targets an individual site or set of publisher-specific sites.

I also chatted with Morgan about the company’s Consumer Choice Initiative, which launched in November. So far, a “relatively modest amount” of banners have been served while in the test messaging phase, but when in full deployment, Tacoda will serve “hundreds of millions of ads every six months” by the middle of the year.