Its been a few months since we talked about Phorm. The online advertising firm has raised controversy due to its technology which allows advertisers to target users based on their online behaviour.

Unsurprisingly, Phorm has met considerable resistance from online privacy campaigners, including the ‘father of the Internet’ Tim Berners-Lee. Big name websites such as Amazon and Wikipedia have also pledged to block Phorm from gather user data from them.

Whilst Phorm has to a certain extent faced down legal threats to its operation, the biggest challenge has been to convince an ISP partner to get involved. For the system to work, Phorm needs to install its equipment into the ISP data centre. No ISP, no Phorm.

Although Phorm convinced BT to run an early trial, it has since lost support from previously willing ISP partners. BT pulled the Phorm contract earlier this year, and TalkTalk has cut ties with the company. Virgin “continues to evaluate” the system.

For this reason, Phorm says that the UK was now just a “medium to long-term prospect”, adding that it will “deploy in other markets first”. The country which has been most open to this form of behavioural targeting is Korea, where Phorm is partnering with the largest ISP ‘KT’.

Nevertheless, Phorm has said that they will keep their UK operation running despite the challenges it faces here.

“Phorm remains fully committed to its operations in the UK. We continue to be active in the market and are confident of the opportunities domestically. Meanwhile, Phorm is also making substantial operational progress internationally”, it said in a statement.

Back in September Phorm released an update to its trading figures, which show that its had incurred a pre-tax loss of $15m for the first half of this year. This is a big drop in the same period last year, when it lost $24.7m.

What do you think of behavioural targeting? Are you willing to give up some privacy in order to get tailored advertising messages? Have we heard the last of Phorm? Leave us a comment below.