As co-CEO of Innovation Interactive, Netmining’s Will Margiloff is part of an $8 billion universe. That's how much Innovation three properties (agency 360i, search optimization provider SearchIgnite, and behavioral targeting platform Netmining) have at stake in terms of internet transactions. His company has been able to tap into and observe a mass of data that taken together can show an effective snapshot of how Internet users are behaving. More importantly for his clients, the Netmining software can show the real-time behavior of its customers as they enter, explore, and exit their websites. The behavioral marketing platform at Netmining is used by dozens of companies from almost every major automotive market to upscale retailer Saks Fifth Avenue. It is known as one of the most actionable behavioral data tools in the business.

But it also competes in a competitive space and still has to convince some of the world’s biggest brands that behavioral data is no longer an option but a necessity. We caught up with Margiloff after the digiday:Targeting event.

Digiday: Netmining's platform, especially after you see a live demo, looks like an easy sell for you. What obstacles do you still face?
Margiloff: Well, when you look at how we set pricing and our ability to be flexible in terms of rev shares and re-marketing agreements, sometimes I don't understand the obstacles. But we do still face a challenge with tagging. It used to be that IT departments didn't like behavioral solutions because every page needed to have a different tag. We've worked hard to make Netmining more IT friendly. We've created a smarter tagging technology that doesn't require a new and different tag for every page.

Digiday:What about outside of the IT space? What's your best pitch to sales and marketing execs?
Margiloff: We always generate a big 'wow' factor from executives, because we increase their ability to connect to customers at the right period of time. What these marketers want to do is create more users. If you can see when someone is at the site, and how they behave when they get there, you can figure out which users have the highest propensity to buy. However, once you know that, sales teams need to know what to do with the leads that are generated. You don't want your sales team to be like the overaggressive shop clerk at the mall who's all over you when you enter the store and then disappears.

Digiday: Is there a publishing opportunity in Netmining's platform?
Margiloff: Absolutely. In fact in the EU we have several clients for which we optimize ad delivery based on content.

Digiday: Where's the opportunity for your company in 2010?
Margiloff: Display ads. We've been talking about that for some time. We help clients make display ads smarter so they can include more relevant and valuable information for each customer. Behavioral data enables this and I think it is a tremendous point of value for publishers and brands.