Revenue Science Chief Revenue Officer Jeff Hirsch speaks with our news editor about his company, BT tips and what's ahead in the field.

As Chief Revenue Officer of Revenue Science, Jeff oversees all development of new advertiser offerings and publisher network relationships. He joined Revenue Science from ValueClick, Inc where he was the SVP of business development responsible for strengthening and expanding the company's publisher networks.

Roger Park: What made you decide to join Revenue Science?

Jeff Hirsch: Initially, I was impressed with the industry-leading behavioral targeting capabilities that the company has been providing for some of the web's top publishers. As I got to know the company better, my respect for their vision, technology and especially people, grew significantly. The vision of expanding the utilization of the Revenue Science behavioral targeting technology to a wider audience, via a network model, was appealing. RSI has the building blocks to construct a new kind of ad network, leveraging behavioral technology to provide increased results for both brand and direct response advertisers and, subsequently, to provide increased monetization opportunities for publishers both large and small.

Park: How is this behavioral targeting network different from those you ran previously?

Hirsch: Networks are in the business of aggregating advertising inventory across a wide array of sites and then marketing that to online advertisers. The good networks, such as ValueClick Media and Tribal Fusion, work diligently to increase the value they can provide to their advertisers through tools like transparency and performance optimization. Increased value for advertisers translates to higher pay-outs and stronger inventory yield management for the publishers on the network.

A behavioral targeting network has the same mandate-- increase value and advertising effectiveness for advertisers and increase the yield for publishers. The difference is that behavioral targeting technology takes successful network models focusing on transparency and performance optimization and adds a level of significance that is magnitudes above traditional methodology. The end result is better results and more efficiency for advertisers and vastly improved yield for publishers.

I also think it is important to differentiate our objectives from those of more traditional ad networks. Revenue Science is not building an ad network to become an ad network-- we are utilizing many of the principles of an ad network to build a distribution engine within which our behavioral targeting technology can thrive for our clientele. That said, the end result will look and smell a lot like the ad networks of today.

Park: What learnings from ValueClick and FastClick will you apply to the Revenue Science Network?

Hirsch: ValueClick and Fastclick have always taken a stance of providing the most value possible utilizing their respective technologies.  That is certainly a lesson that Revenue Science will embrace, and one that any company in this space should hold dear. Additionally, treating our publisher partners as true partners is a page from the playbook of these two fine companies.

Park: Revenue Science is best known as providing publisher-side behavioral targeting. Can you describe the role that the network plays for the company?

Hirsch: There are two distinct areas where this will contribute to the success of the network: 1) Revenue Science is committed to publisher-side behavioral targeting and our network business model will be highly complementary to our current partners, providing operational leverage to them and, correspondingly, back into the network, and 2) our experience and expertise in these demanding environments has given us the knowledge necessary to provide value for both advertisers and publishers.