Phenom/pariah NebuAd officially dead

NebuAd, which ignited an Internet privacy brouhaha that prompted Congressional debate and hearings, spawned a spate of lawsuits and brought “behavioral targeting” into the mainstream vernacular a year ago, died a quiet death Monday.

The company once reigned as the darling of Internet advertising gurus who promised customers targeted advertising based on recording and analyzing the surfing habits of individual consumers trough Deep Packet Inspection—collected without their knowledge or with simply their implied acceptance of ISP terms of service.

For privacy advocates, NebuAd was every fear realized.

The company has been terminally ill since shelving its product in September, but the roots of its fall began when its star clients—Charter Communications, Embarq, CenturyTel, et al.—began bailing in droves when Congress began to get antsy about just how much info the software tracked.

The company has been fading ever since. On Monday it filed court papers assigning its remaining assets to an entity that will pay off creditors.

For more:
-see this MediaPost story

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