AOL Closes Tacoda; Merges Customers Into Advertising.com

Matt Marshall at VentureBeat is reporting that AOL is closing their Tacoda behavioral targeting division and merging the customers into Advertising.com. Advertising.com is part of AOL's overall Platform-A advertising platform. Marshall has posted an email that AOL sent to Tacoda publishers informing them of the change.

One thing I note is that while Marshall notes that publishers will be pushed into Advertising.com, the email also mentions, "Your advertising.com representative...will follow up with you next week to discuss your inventory monetization options moving forward." This looks like there's no guarantee what the publishers will end up with.

David Kaplan at PaidContent spoke with Lynda Clarizio, president of Platform-A. Clarizio disagrees with some of the statements that Marshall made on the VentureBeat piece. Clarizio says the behavioral targeting pricing is the same on Tacoda and Advertising.com. Kaplan has a good look at Tacoda and the changes since they were acquired by AOL a year ago.

As a side note, everyone I know using Advertising.com is happy when they get a campaign paying a dollar cpm.