Social Targeting

A startup based in Boston is bringing a social element to the targeting of display ads on the web. Adpinion allows visitors to vote on ads (thumbs up or down), the combined vote determines what ads you and other visitors see when visiting an Adpinion network site. Adpinion collects preferences through a voting bar that sits along the left hand side of their embeddable ad unit. Each vote contributes to a profile of your ad preferences and the ad profile for the site overall. Rates will be based on clicks and related to how close ads match your preferences.

Of course the best measure of an ad's success will remain a click....

Here's how it works...

1. Adpinon helps you place your ad into their system, where related people and ads group together.
2. Feedback from users helps to move the ad into more relevant groups.
3. When a user goes to a website within our network, Adpinion displays an ad that suits their interests.

It's in The Game

Microsoft, via its acquisition in 2006 of Massive Incorporated the in-game ad company, has announced a deal with EA Games to channel ads into online games. The deal covers all of EA Sports games on the XBox and PC platforms (i.e. the platforms most likely to be connected to the Web) Massive, in effect, acts as a broker between advertisers (or agencies) that want to get their ads in front of gamers, and game publishers eager to tap new sources of revenue. The ads themselves are dynamic and can be customized to specific groups or geographies. They can be switched in and out, be tested and optimized – a major leap from the current, static in-game offerings. This is an important win for Microsoft as they attempt to gain a step on Google who recently acquired Adscape.



According to analyst firm Parks Associates, in-game advertising will grow by at least 50 percent annually to $432 million by 2010.

Behavior Modification

In an attempt to provide more advanced targeting for advertisers AOL has agreed to acquire online behavioral targeting advertising network Tacoda. An interesting marriage, as Tacoda Chairman Dave Morgan explained, his firm has found a media platform large enough to deliver on the promises of behavioral targeting.

And promise there is. In June, eMarketer predicted that the behavioral targeting market would increase to $3.8 billion by 2011, from $350 million in 2006.

More here...

Grown Up Friends

I have noticed a marked increase in the number of LinkedIn invitations over the last few months. (BTW, the who is looking at your profile feature on the homepage is really cool). This anecdotal observation is borne out by Hitwise who have reported a 323% increase in US visits to the professional social network site over the past year...

Voice Authentication For Mobile

Voice Pay a U.K. based company has created a methodology by which a person's voiceprint (as individual as a fingerprint) can be used as a way to secure credit card payments instead of giving out their card number. Great for making payments by mobile phone for example. Powered by a speech authentication algorithm developed by Voice Vault, the system analyzes 117 voice parameters that are wholly unique to an individual's vocal chords and the shape of the inside of the mouth and nasal cavity.
A customer simply sets up an account with Voice Pay and provides a voiceprint by repeating a series of randomly generated numbers. Authentication happens at the time of purchase. For example, a website might have a Voice Pay icon that the shopper would click to make a purchase. The click would launch the Voice Pay site, which, once the shopper had logged in, would call the customer's cell phone.

The Voice Pay site is here...

Friending

According to a new report from Forrester "How Consumers Use Social Networks", marketers who want to reach their audiences on social networking sites should:

1. dispense with traditional Web marketing tactics,
2. encourage "friending,"
3. regularly refresh content.
   

The report includes data on both adult and youth social networking site users.

More here...

And The Winners Are...

Time magazine has published a list of the 5 worst websites out there. In no particular order:

1. SecondLife
2. Evite
3. eHarmony
4. Meez
5. MySpace

How the mighty have fallen...

Many Eyes

Many Eyes is a free, on-line data visualization tool that aims to enable a new social kind of data analysis. As part of IBM's Collaborative User Experience research group, the goal of Many Eyes is to help people collectively make sense of data - visualization as a catalyst for discussion and collective insight around data.

More here...

Competition for Google

In the world of on-line office-type applications, Google has some new, and interesting competitors in terms of the quality and range of browser-based applications offered. A recent Gartner report placed Zoho at the top of its list of "Cool Vendors in Web 2.0," Zoho's Office suite also won PC World's 100 Best Products of 2007 Award. Most of Zoho's products are free (for the time being). It charges for only a couple of products geared toward small businesses. Its CRM system, for example, is free for the first three users and $12 per user per month thereafter. Zoho plans to keep free versions of its products available for individuals. There will, in the near future, be a tipping point for this kind of application delivery.

My Vote for Site of the Year

The best website I have seen so far this year (best defined as most innovative, fun, engaging, technologically advanced, integrated with mobile, useful - you get the picture) is the sitelet for the launch of the new Volvo C30.

Britain in Front

I spent last week in the UK, my Father and all of my aunts ands uncles (average age 73) now have broadband access to the Web. Not surprising then that the UK will make up more than half of all online ad spending in Western Europe this year. This will rise to 52.6% of regional online spending by 2011 — amounting to nearly £4.5 billion ($8.2 billion).

Targeting on Yahoo

Yahoo released on Monday its new SmartAds technology that allows advertisers to automatically compile and present ads based on a Web user's profile, including such data as their location, recent product searches and, in some cases, age or household income. Behavioural targeting married with demographics and the ability to create relevant banner ads on the fly... Certainly one to watch over the coming months. According to eMarketeer, the market for such targeted ads is expected to nearly double to $1 billion in 2008 from this year, and grow to $3.8 billion by 2011.

More here.

Agencies On Second Life

Like many agencies DraftFCB has a presense on Second Life. Unlike most they have created a pretty funny video to introduce it. worth a look...

What A HooHaa

A New Zealand based company HooHaa has been successful with a model based on customers receiving mobile phone credits in exchange for providing profile information and accepting up to 4 SMS text marketing messages a day...

According to the company, the HooHaa database had a broad cross-section of consumers, but was strongest in the demographic for people aged 18-30.

More here...