page tags, microformats, and such in-page elements as meta tags and cookie values. A gaggle of tags can be expensive to maintain, require frequent updates, work at cross-purposes, and affect overall website performance.
Behnam says Tealium iQ is the first software-as-a-service technology to allow enterprise marketers to manage 100 percent of the tagging themselves. Users can add a new vendor with a few clicks and easily set rules for how the tags should be loaded–for example, specifying that the Google AdWords tag loads only if a visitor comes to the website from AdWords. “Adding an AdWords tag becomes a simple ‘point and click’ on a logo in our library,” Behnam says.
Before starting Tealium, Behnam and co-founder Mike Anderson worked at WebSideStory, a San Diego company that provided website traffic analysis and Hitbox-based Web analytics. WebSideStory changed its name to Visual Sciences in 2007 and was acquired by Omniture in 2008, the year before Omniture was itself acquired by Adobe Systems.
Initial funding for Tealium came from the founders and consulting work. Behnam says the company, which now has 10 employees, is still doing some consulting. It’s just becoming a smaller part of their business.
The company says its enterprise customers include Cisco Systems, Dreamworks, Advance Auto Parts, and Orange, the French telecom giant. Limelight Networks CEO Jeff Lunsford, who was previously a CEO at WebSideStory (where he worked with Behnam and Anderson), became a Tealium investor and board advisor in May.
