Targeting You: Yahoo Moves Deeper into Behaviorial Targeting with BlueLithium Purchase

With the $300 million purchase of ad network BlueLithium today, Yahoo! is moving further into targeting ads based on people’s online behavior. Behavioral targeting, as it’s known, helps marketers track people’s behavior, such as visits or searches, across Web sites to show more relevant ads.

The acquisition comes about a month after AOL said it would buy behavioral targeting network Tacoda for a reported $275 million. Despite privacy concerns about such targeting, Microsoft has also made such targeting a centerpiece of its online ad efforts, and Google has taken some tentative steps into more precise targeting recently. Before the latest deal was announced, a Bear Stearns analyst named Yahoo its top pick, boosting the stock more than 5%, partly thanks to continued speculation that Yahoo could get bought, perhaps by Microsoft. But with moves like this acquisition, it seems pretty clear Yahoo’s going its own way for now.