When PaidContent reached Platform-A boss Lynda Clarizio on the train home from work, she said AOL only made the move to rationalize the division's contracts with publishers. After the integration, Tacoda's behavioral-targeting tech will be Platform-A's behavioral targeting tech. A single contract will let AOL fill ads spots it can't sell via Tacoda with Advertising.com's remnant ads, but CPM rates should stay the same, Clarizio said. Clarizio and other Advertising.com insiders opposed the Tacoda acquisition, believing their behavioral-targeting technology could command a similar lift in ad rates, so there's some pride-swallowing being done here. But the ouster of Tacoda's executives and the neutron-bomb elimination of two-thirds of its staff should salve that wound.

Since we made the guess that Clarizio might be the a candidate to take charge of Microsoft's online division, insiders have laughed it off. Clarizio's a lawyer by training, they note — the ultimate diss in the tech world. But if this kind of inwardly directed knife-sharpening isn't what's called for in Redmond, we don't know what is.

Peer39 Launches World’s Most Advanced
Semantic Advertising Platform



Former TACODA SVP Matthew S. Goldstein Joins
as Chief Operating Officer



NEW YORK (June 30, 2008) Peer39 today announced the launch of SemanticMatch™, the world’s most advanced semantic advertising platform. Based on natural language processing and machine learning, Peer39’s patented algorithms understand content meaning and sentiment, enabling precision targeting down to the page level so that display ads appear on pages most relevant to their message. SemanticMatch™ gives brands the necessary protection to target any page, including inside social media, and opens entire new targeting capabilities to online brand and performance advertisers.



Matthew S. Goldstein, who has been Senior Vice President, Revenue Operations for TACODA since June 2006, has joined Peer39 as the company’s Chief Operating Officer. He will report to Amiad Solomon, CEO, and be based in New York.



“Matthew was an integral part of the success that TACODA enjoyed as it was purchased by AOL, and with MTV Networks’ online operations,” says Mr. Solomon. “We are pleased to have someone with his depth of experience joining us in establishing Peer39 as the market leader in semantic advertising solutions.”



“Semantic targeting is widely seen to be the next stage of advertising technology, beyond contextual or behavioral. What makes Peer39 different is that ads are targeted to the meaning of pages rather than to pre-selected keywords. The problem with keywords, as is well-known, is that they can be highly irrelevant to the actual page and conversation happening,” says Mr. Solomon. “We eliminate the errors that can plague keyword targeting and unlike other forms of online targeting, Peer39’s SemanticMatch™ does not set cookies or track user behavior.”



“When I studied the next generation of ad targeting technology, it was clear immediately that Peer39 has taken granular targeting to its deepest level by understanding page meaning and sentiment,” says Mr. Goldstein.



For publishers, including portals, news sites, ad networks, social media, blogs, and forums, Peer39's technology effectively monetizes a wide range of online content and increases the value of content pages that grow revenue and ROI. Using SemanticMatch™, advertisers simply decide where they seek to reach users in the marketing sales funnel – anywhere from awareness (“autos”) to consideration (“SUV”) to preference (“hybrid”) to purchase and retention – and the system automatically targets their ads to relevant pages, without the need for keyword targeting or setting cookies.



In addition, the company announced that it had closed $8 million in Series B financing with Canaan Partners as the lead investor and with participation from existing investors, Dawntreader Ventures and JP Morgan. “Advertisers and publishers continue to seek better, more effective ways to reach and market to consumers online,” says Warren Lee, principal at Canaan Partners. “With past investments in innovative online advertising companies such as DoubleClick and Tremor Media, we here at Canaan are excited to be working with the Peer39 team to further develop its unique technologies and to scale its business.”



Finally, Peer39 announced its advisory board consisting of Eytan Elbaz (co-founder of Applied Semantics, inventor of AdSense), Daniel Jaye (former President of TACODA), and Daniel T. Ciporin (former Chairman and CEO of Shopping.com-eBay).



Peer39 (www.peer39.com) is the global leader in semantic advertising solutions. Based on natural language processing and machine learning, Peer39’s patented algorithms understand page meaning and sentiment, and deliver the most relevant and effective brand safe online advertising. Headquartered in New York City, Peer39 maintains a research and development center in Israel. Peer39 Labs conducts primary research in semantic web technologies resulting in a number of patents covering its technology and business practices.

Here's the problem: Entrepreneurs need to get paid. Those who finance need return on investment. It's nuts to take any company public that cannot deliver consistent and predictable growth and earnings quarter over quarter for years. We've sold Del.icio.us, FeedBurner, and Tacoda, to Yahoo, Google, and AOL, respectively. Were we happy to take their money? Yes. But look deeper. Del.icio.us: the user base has fallen off. FeedBurner: I don't see any integration between AdWords and FeedBurner. Tacoda: top members of the Tacoda team are gone. I am wondering if there is a better way: a place for private equity investors to trade securities. The companies remain private, do not file with the SEC, and do not trade daily. When an entrepreneur or investor wants liquidity on a position they own, they come to these private markets, offer their position or part of their position for sale, and a trade is made.

Like Yahoo's ousted ad-sales chieftains, Gregory Coleman and Wenda Harris Millard, Kelly grew up in the world of print publishing. And banner ads, although smaller than full-page print ads, were comfortably close: Sold in large packages at a CPM rate to brand-minded advertisers.

That's not, of course, the world we live in today. Some advertisers still pay by the thousands of impressions, but others insist on paying only when users click through, or when an ad actually leads to a sale. The latter forms of ads, of course, dominate search, which is the largest category of Internet advertising today.

To sell search ads, however, you need a search engine. And though Kelly had been running AOL's search business, he hadn't been doing a great job of it. Former AOL executive John McKinley excoriated the company for slavishly imitating Google in its search-results design. And even copying Google, which already provided AOL's raw search results, hasn't stemmed AOL's steady loss in search market share.

Stepping into Kelly's place is Curt Viebranz, the CEO of Tacoda, an ad-targeting company recently acquired by AOL. Viebranz, like Kelly, did stints at Time Inc. and Time Warner, but he has a longer tech and new media resume. He'll be running a group at AOL called Platform A, which rolls together Advertising.com, Tacoda, and other ad-sales organizations. Perhaps MediaWeek can issue a rush update and slot Viebranz in Kelly's place.

Wilson's investment in Tacoda actually predates the formation of Union Square Ventures, but partner Brad Burnham argues more ably than I can that Tacoda shaped his and Wilson's thinking in forming their current firm. Two years ago, Wilson told writer John Heilemann that media and marketing would be among the worlds most transformed by the Internet — and most lucrative for venture capitalists, making New York, not Menlo Park, the ideal perch for spotting new ideas and new companies. With hundreds of millions of dollars worth of portfolio companies sold, he's looking increasingly right.