This installment of the Online Marketing Champions series features Dave Morgan, CEO of TACODA. TACODA Systems is universally considered as a pioneer in behavorial targeting and audience management. TACODA most recently launched its audience-centric ad network called AudienceMatch Network, which enables direct marketing and search advertisers for the first time to use behavioral targeting in combination with non-personal demographic data to reach defined audience segments of significant size across a network of top branded Internet sites.

Dave Morgan, CEO, founded TACODA in April 2001 to develop innovative technologies for target marketing. Prior to TACODA, Mr. Morgan founded and was the Chairman/CEO of Real Media Inc., a company which he led from 1995 to 2001. Under his leadership, the company became a $54 million global marketing technology and service company with more than 500 employees in 19 countries. A lawyer by training, Mr. Morgan served as General Counsel and Director of New Media Ventures for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association from 1991 to 1995, where he helped launch more than a dozen new media businesses. Actively involved in industry trade groups, Mr. Morgan currently serves as chairman of the Associates Board of the Interactive Advertising Board (IAB).

In our interview Morgan explains why it’s good that consumers are now in charge, and how behavorial targeting and accountability will continue to impact marketers and consumers for the better in the future.

eMarketingIQ: Can you give us some background on how you came to found Tacoda and what it does?

Dave Morgan: My professional career in the media industry started in an unusual place. While most in the online ad industry today trace their roots to backgrounds in ad sales, or production, or technology, I used to be a newspaper lawyer. I spent several years working on issues that ranged from pre-publication libel review to advertising acceptability standards to labor management and then, in 1992, I became involved in some of the first online information services, which at that time were being spearheaded by newspaper companies. By 1995, I had caught the entrepreneurial bug and founded Real Media, one of the Internet’s first and largest ad networks and ad serving companies. I started the company with no employees and no revenue and was fortunate to have been able to manage the company as its CEO and chairman to more than $50 million in annual revenue and more than 500 employees. I left the company in 2001, shortly before it was merged to form 24/7 Real Media, and launched TACODA, the industry’s first audience management and behavioral targeting company. TACODA helps publishers shift their business models from just placing ads on pages to delivering target audiences to advertisers.

eMarketingIQ: You've said targeting must deliver value to the customers. Why is that the necessity now and how can marketers better apply it and really understand it?

DM: There is no question that on the Internet, consumers are in charge. I am convinced that for marketers to be successful in the future, they must be able to deliver consumers ads that they want. At the least, this means more relevancies and less clutter.

eMarketingIQ: What's the real value between marketer and customer, with presenting the right message at the right time?

DM: If marketers give a person ads and offers that they want, they are much more likely to give those marketers their desired responses, whether that is a favorable brand impression or an inquiry or a sale.

eMarketingIQ: Why are more sites out-sourcing the behavorial targeting to firms like Tacoda?

DM: Behavioral targeting is hard. It requires very sophisticated technology and a lot of infrastructure investment. Web publishers today have learned that they are better served to make investments in their core competencies, like content development or ad sales, and outsource the development and operation of technologies like targeting to firms that are specialized in it, like TACODA.

eMarketingIQ: What about the debate over privacy and behavioral targeting? Can the two co-exist peacefully?

DM: Absolutely. Behavioral Targeting will only exist if it respects consumers’ privacy. Just as Spyware will die, so will attempts to use targeting to go further with personal data than consumers are comfortable. That is why TACODA does not capture or own any consumer data.

eMarketingIQ: Why is accountability one of the most relevant issues in regard to marketing?

DM: Accountability is one of the most relevant issues today in marketing because enterprises now want their marketing departments to become profit centers rather than cost centers. Companies are no longer comfortable throwing a bunch of marketing expenditures against a wall and hoping that some of them stick. Day-in and day-out accountability and predictability in marketing are now more important competitive advantages for companies than the random brilliant marketing idea or campaign.

eMarketingIQ: What are three benefits to employing behavorial targeting on a Web site, even if it's not a Tacoda based system?

DM: Publishers employing audience management and behavioral targeting solutions realize 1) more revenue, 2) improved yield from their inventory, and 3) are able to build a strategic audience database asset.

eMarketingIQ: Is real time targeting going to be the future in marketing?

DM: Yes. All advertising is becoming more digital, more addressable, more measurable, and more real-time. Within five years, it is hard to imagine that any electronic advertising (TV, radio, etc.) won’t be Internet Protocol (IP) delivered.

eMarketingIQ: Why does having audience based, out-of-the banner frequency capping raise the bar on audience management in regard to marketing?

DM: Controlling the frequency of messaging is one of the ways that it can be made more relevant and more effective. To do this effectively, you need to cap ads by person, not just by site or by page. To do this, you must use Audience Management technology. There is no other way.

eMarketingIQ: If you could give one piece of advice to a company in the early stages of planning its next marketing push, what would it be?

DM: Understand who your target audience is, and then create you media plan on that basis, not just on the products or pages that you want to buy (or someone wants to sell you). Target people, not just pages.