TACODA Eye Tracking Study Reveals 17% More Engagement for Behavioral
Targeted Ads Over Contextual Targeting

Landmark Study Also Finds That After the First Exposure, the
Behavioral Targeting Advantage Skyrockets to 54%


NEW YORK, NY -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 01/17/06 -- TACODA, the leading
provider of behaviorally-targeted online advertising solutions, today
released the results of the first eye tracking study ever conducted
comparing behavioral targeting to contextual targeting in driving
engagement for brand advertisers. Among the results: behavioral
targeting generated an average of 17% more looks at these ads than
contextual targeting, and after the first exposure, the advantage
skyrockets to 54%.


The immediate implication of the study is that not only can behavioral
targeting help advertisers create more engagement with consumers --
have their online ads actually noticed by them -- but that it can help
the ads be noticed more often and for more time the more that
consumers are exposed to them. Behavioral targeting uses internet
technologies to reach people with highly relevant ads based on what
they read and where they navigate while contextual targeting places
ads adjacent to editorial content expected to be visited by target
audiences.


TACODA and research pioneer Bill Harvey, recently announced a sizeable
study to explore how and why behavioral targeting outperforms
contextual targeting in numerous measures of engagement including
purchase intent, advertising awareness, branding measures, and ROI.


In the first release of findings last month, case studies from
numerous Internet companies were compiled showing that behavioral
targeting often outscores contextual targeting in click-through rate,
purchase intent, ROI, and many other media effectiveness measures.
This was unexpected because both behavioral targeting and contextual
targeting share the same target audiences and the editorial
environment of contextual targeting was always believed to increase
attention to ads.


The eye tracking study was conducted in November-December 2005 in
cooperation with Panasonic, whose plasma TV screen ads were tested
along with ads for a car company and a computer company.


On why behavioral targeting ads generate more looks than contextual
targeting, Bill Harvey, CEO of Next Century Media, says, "It is
probably a combination of more relevancy and less clutter. It could be
that there are just too many ads for the same product category
attacking the user's eye in contextual targeting, causing the user to
avoid looking at any of them. Even though they are on that site
researching a planned purchase, they might try to stay focused on the
editorial content during that process, resisting the bombardment of
similar ad messages. On the other hand, when in the market for a
product, and finding an ad for that product in a completely unrelated
site, the user might react to the surprise of that unexpected event by
looking at the ad. We call these two hypotheses 'Clamor' and
'Surprise' respectively, and will be studying both of them more in
future studies."


"This is really landmark research. We never expected to find that
Behavioral Targeting seems to escape the same 'banner burn-out'
problem that Contextual Targeting suffers from," said Dave Morgan,
TACODA's CEO. "Behavioral targeting is certainly being revealed to be
even more powerful than any of us expected and this study suggests new
ways to use behavioral and contextual targeting to complement each
other to achieve the greatest advertising effectiveness."


Full Report in PDF Format available on request


Next Century Media (www.nextcenturymedia.com) is a company formed and
nurtured by some of the brightest minds in marketing. Its mission is
to develop methods for making marketing more effective and
accountable. Based in Gardiner, NY, they have done so since 1993,
leading the way in addressable commercials, measuring media
effectiveness, and improved measurement of television audiences on a
near-census electronic basis with consumer permission.


New York-based TACODA (www.tacoda.com) is the world's largest provider
of behaviorally-targeted online advertising solutions. Through TACODA
Audience Networks(TM), brand advertisers can reach their target
audiences on premium sites at substantial scale, and do it simply and
cost-effectively while generating powerful, actionable audience
insights. By delivering relevant messages to more than 110 million
unique users across over 3,000 individual national, regional and
vertical websites, TACODA simplifies behaviorally-targeted buys for
brand advertisers. Virtually every top 50 online advertiser has run
behaviorally-targeted campaigns on either TACODA's network or
TACODA-enabled websites.


TACODA, AUDIENCE NETWORKS and AUDIENCE MANAGEMENT SERVICES are
trademarks of TACODA Systems, Inc.