Due to a class action lawsuit, NebuAd will be calling it quits.  Last year NebuAd had to lay off most of their staff in order to cut costs too.  Rather than bleeding more cash, NebuAd will be giving their assets to creditors and will “cease to exist as an ongoing concern” according to court documents.

The shutting down of NebuAd will be seen as a failed investment by venture capital firms Menlo Ventures and Sierra Ventures. Both companies invested $20 million into NebuAd around September 2007.

NebuAd was an advertising company based in Redwood City, California.  NebuAd sought deals with ISPs for behavioral targeting purposes.  At one point, NebuAd had enough partnerships to cover 10% of the broadband population in America.

The company faced a substantial amount of controversy that led to their downfall.  Back in July NebuAd CEO Bob Dykes appeared in front of the House Energy and Commerce Telecommunications Subcommittee and admitted to collect information from people without their permission.

Four months later, a group of people filed a lawsuit against NebuAd and six ISP companies for the tracking activities.  Will NebuAd be missed?  Very unlikely.

[via WSJ]

NebuAd is a Redwood City, Calif. based behavioral targeting company that works with Internet Service Providers to determine how advertisers should design their media for different markets.  The names of the ISPs they work with seems to be confidential and undisclosed on their website. 

“NebuAd combines this web-wide view of pages navigated, searches performed, ads clicked, etc., with the industry’s most accurate targeting capabilities, matching consumer interests across more than 1,000 categories. And all of this is done without collecting and using any personally identifiable information,” states their Advertisers Overview page.

The investors of NebuAd includes Menlo Ventures and Sierra Ventures.  NebuAd has roughly $30 million in funding and has ambitious plans for operation expansion.  Considering the market opportunities, its an excellent time to sell services related advertising analytics such as those provided by NebuAd.  Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, and AOL have all acquired digital advertising companies for billions of dollars, thus indicating that such opportunities will be around for a long time now.