A few weeks ago I told you that Redpoint partner Scott Raney was bullish on many things, including Ad-data aggregation firm BlueKai. Guess I should have listened more closely. Today BlueKai allegedly announced a $21 million round of financing , according to TechCrunch, though we are still trying to confirm this because we have not seen the actual press release. GGV Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and Battery Ventures are in on the action. If true, this would bring BlueKai's total funding to $35 million, not an insubstantial sum in a crushing econmomic recession (can I have some?). What does BlueKai, a Seattle-based Internet marketing firm, do? The BlueKai Data Exchange aggregates annonymous Internet data . Think of this as creating a new "data aggregation" layer across the Internet, allowing advertisers to look at the behavior of potential customers over a wide variety of advertising platforms. BlueKai says this data includes the information of more than 145 million users. Still confused about how data aggregation works? Here it is, in a nutshell: A data aggregator like BlueKai sets up a platform that Internet publishers can join. The publishers then share anonymous data about what particular users are doing (the users must opt into the data via a cookie). For example, the data aggregation shows that "USER #438" really likes to fly to Mexico and buy expensive suits. An advertiser that sells suits or trips to Mexico can then choose to buy targeted advertisements that reach User #438. Data aggregation is an obvious trend for Internet advertising because the entire value of the Internet marketing lies in user data.  Think about it, what marketers never liked about magazine ads was they really couldn't tell who was reading them. There is the old marketing saw, "You know 50% of your advertising is effective, you just don't know which 50%." Well, on the Internet, you have the potential to now exactly what everbody is doing. Now, the trend toward data aggregation and targeted user info is progressing cautiously, for two main reason: 1) Many publishers would rather not have everybody know everything about their user, or even share it for competitive reasons (this could create pricing pressure). 2) Privacy concerns that users would have about sharing their surfing data, even if it is anonymously. Although as witnessed by what Google has done with data, it would seem that consumers are not as concerned about privacy as you would think they are. After all, Google knows everything about you. As former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy once said, "You have zero privacy anyway... get over it."