Romtelecom Launching Personalized Ad Insertion Service, Using Phorm

     

Yes, carrier behavioral advertising is back - as well as Phorm, one of the early players whose acts in the previous round nearly terminated the space for nearly 3 years.

 

Last week we saw that Orange France (DSL) "likes to know you better" (here) - and now - "With no public debate before the launch at the end of September, Romtelecom has presented a new service called MyClicknet, which basically implements the Phorm behavioural advertising solution with an opt-in approach".

All aspects of the new service are very similar to the one Orange is offering, with the same need to look deep into the traffic: " .. almost all traffic (browsing and searches) on port 80 from Internet users that opt-in for such a system will be scanned in order to create a profile that can be sold to interested advertising companies. Romtelecom insists that no personal data is recorded or kept and the user is identified in the ad network based on an anonymous string of characters. Romtelecom also claims that the system will not scan any type of "delicate subjects", such as content related to smoking, pornography, alcohol, drugs, health issues or related to children under 14 years old"

Romtelecom , jointly owned by OTE, Greece (54%) and The Ministry of Communications and Information Society (MCSI), Romania (46%), has close to 1.1M broadband subscribers, 33% of the local market (June '11, here). The carriers' press release - "Surf the web directly to the point: MyClicknet from Romtelecom" - here - says - "The new service is another Romtelecom initiative to enrich its customers’ online experience via new services"

See "Phorm gets back on the European stage" - here.