The Gong Show

The NY Post just broke the story about AOL/Time Warner’s acquisition of TACODA, a Union Square Ventures portfolio company. For more thoughts on the subject, check out Union Square Ventures’ take on the deal.

It’s just a coincidence that Jeremy Liew mentioned TACODA in an engaging VentureBeat article today; however, it’s a great example of why TACODA is so interesting:

The WSJ recently had an excellent article on behavioral targeting that detailed Pepsi’s launch of Aquafina Alive,their new low cal vitamin enhanced water. The campaign was backed by an online campaign through Tacoda and targeted to people who had previously visited “healthy lifestyles” websites.

The result? Pepsi recorded a threefold increase in the number of people clicking on its Aquafina Alive ads compared with previous campaigns. “We’ve never been able to get to this level of granularity,” says John Vail, director of the interactive marketing group at Pepsi-Cola North America.

Q.E.D. Congrats to both TACODA and AOL/Time Warner.