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Revenue Science to offer behavioral ads in Japan

Company says it's in talks with a wireless carrier to provide similar services on Net-browsing cell phones in the U.S.

Reuters
Privately held Revenue Science will offer behaviorally targeted advertising services on Internet-browsing cell phones in Japan, entering a new field for sending commercials based on a consumer's Web habits.

Revenue Science Chief Executive Bill Gossman said on Monday that the company had chosen to offer the services in Japan first because of heavy Web use over cell phones in that market.

Revenue Science aims to offer similar services in the United States in about one year and is in talks with a wireless carrier, he told Reuters.

"Everything we've learned in Japan should be directly applicable to the U.S.," he said in an interview.

Revenue Science's service will be available through a partnership with Japanese Web portal operator mediba and the Digital Advertising Consortium over KDDI, Japan's No. 2 mobile carrier.

Behavioral targeting allows marketers to send advertisers to a more specific group of consumers, gauging the kinds of products or services they might be interested in based on the Internet sites they have recently visited.

In the United States alone, marketers are expected to nearly double their spending on behaviorally targeted ads to $1 billion next year from $575 million in 2007, according to Web research firm eMarketer.