The Wall Street Journal

By Scott Denne

Television, with an advertising market that dwarfs any part of the digital landscape, has long been an attractive target for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

Many companies set out to bring Internet-style, targeted advertisements to that market, but after more than a decade of trying, both by startups and tech giants, no one’s yet taken a significant chunk of it.

“The irony, after so many years, is that the online ad world never really got to the adult table of advertising,” said Dave Morgan, who founded Tacoda, one of the earliest behavioral targeting companies and Real Media, an early ad network. The problem, he says, is that so many tech companies were looking to provide the perfect way to deliver television ads and they let that get in the way of providing a better way.

His current company, Simulmedia, is working on a better way. Now that audiences are scattered across cable and broadcast television, due to the rise in quality of cable shows in recent years, Simulmedia runs an ad network that enables advertisers to buy those audiences across shows.

But companies working on the “perfect way,” like New York-based Invidi Technologies, are seeing more reasons than ever to be optimistic that the time has come for advertisers to deliver ads to television viewers based on an individual’s location, past viewing habits, household and demographic data.

“I’ve always just jokingly wondered when that line of people was going to form in front of our door wanting to put in this great technology, and 10 years and thousands of business calls later, it’s happening,” said Dave Downey, Invidi’s chief executive.

There are several reasons for this, but more than any it’s happening because service providers, like DirecTV have made it a priority, he said.

But new hopes also bring new competition. An article in today’s VentureWire (subscription required) takes a deeper look at the prospects and challenges facing companies like Invidi that are trying to make targeted television ads a reality.