After my post of last week lambasting NebuAd for using information obtained from internet service providers in order to serve ads to web browsers based on users' browsing behavior, I was contacted by the CEO of NebuAd, Robert Dykes. He agreed to talk with me about his company and the internet advertising world.

I started by asking Dykes what steps NebuAD has taken to maintain the privacy of the customers of the ISPs with which they work. Dykes told me his company realized early on the security implications of its processes.

"In formulating the structure of how our equipment would work, (at this time) the government was subpoenaing AT&T and Verizon for their data... (and) AOL's search data had become public. We realized that...we had to be extremely careful in the way we structured our equipment and what we did on the internet... so that we would never be the subject of a subpoena from the government. So our structure is such that we never have any information that would be of use to the government. (There) never would be any information there of a personal nature.

"(We) built our system such that, as we map a user over and over again... that mapping is reflected only as a hash number, not as any personally identifiable information, not even an IP address... All we track is that somebody qualified for certain interest categories...(we) don't keep the raw data about what searches they did."

I've known Dave Morgan, the founder of TACODA, for some time. Back in 1995, he founded Real Media, which was a pioneer of online ad networks.

No doubt, he's one of the top thinkers in the space – and has been a great source for my stories at BloggingStocks.

Well, today TACODA announced it is selling to AOL, a unit of Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) and also the owner of BloggingStocks.

Morgan has proved himself a step ahead of the technology curve and TACODA is no exception. The company is a leader in so-called "behavioral targeting" for online ad networks. Basically, it means an ad can be based on such things as preferences, age, gender and so on.

It's cool stuff – but not easy to pull off. Also, it's something that needs a lot of scale. And that's why a deal with AOL makes a lot of sense.

In fact, according to a study from eMarketer, the behavioral targeting market is forecast to grow from $350 million in 2006 to $3.8 billion by 2011.

So where's Morgan going now? Actually, he said he'll be moving over to AOL (this is according to an email exchange I had with him this morning).

If you want to check out more recent M&A deals, click here.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.