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Start-Up Watch COD: Compass Labs uses real-time social comments to pinpoint user interests and deliver targeted ads 0

How do data companies and targeting engines determine your interests? Most of them use cookies to determine the sorts of content you’re consuming and the sites you’re visiting. It’s been proven effective, But if we get real for a minute, we need to admit to ourselves that Display response rates tend to be so microscopic that even small improvements in targeting make a difference. I’m not diminishing the power of BT to improve results but rather pointing out that the standard approaches and algorithms needn’t be perfect to have an impact.

But what if we could be CERTAIN about what a consumer was interested in. More specifically, interested in buying?

Compass Labs is an interesting new company that thinks it has a way to do just that. Rather than inferring user passions and needs, it analyzes what people actually tell the world they are interested in through their social media activity.

Put it this way: Would you rather put a Cadillac banner up in front of:

A consumer that has visited a lot of luxury auto content?
Someone who just typed “I am interested in buying a Cadillac” in their Twitter status?
Of course it’s not quite as simple as that; based on what I read from my friends and connections, comments are rarely THAT obvious. But the basic principle behind Compass Labs is that more effective targeting is possible when we interpret people’s comments than when we read the tea leaves of their Internet travels.

Theirs is a real-time ad targeting and serving platform that puts ads into social environments precisely when users identify their interests. These ads appear in Facebook, Twitter, social media apps, and thousands of community posting boards across the web. In total, the company says it can reach 200,000,000 web users in any given month with highly targeted messages that offer stronger response and conversion rates.

Publicly available social media information enables Compass Labs to offer a broad range of targeting options, including users’ current interests, lifestyles, purchase intent, demographics, location and other factors.

Here’s their pitch vid from last year’s Under the Radar:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10810222

As is often the case with advanced targeting, the benefits to DR marketers are obvious. But brand-side advertisers can also benefit by impacting brand perceptions among people who in earlier stages of the buying funnel.

Flipping the coin over for a sec, there are some significant benefits to the pub side as well. Obviously Facebook and Twitter benefit from more ads, and higher value impressions. But for pubs that offer forums, this stream of advertising revenue can be almost 100% incremental because it has traditionally been so hard to convince advertisers to place messages in UGC environments. Advertisers tend to fear the unknown, and forums may as well be renamed “Unknown Zone” as far as content goes.

With this new dimension of precision targeting, millions more page views can get monetized – and at strong rates.

I haven’t worked on any programs using them, but I think the concept is rather compelling, and warrants a serious look from DR and Brand advertisers.

Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.

Posted on: 05-28-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

Start-Up Watch COD: Buysight delivers retargeting KPIs at real scale 0

We’ve all done it: gone to a site looking for info, or even ready to buy, and then gotten distracted by something. Maybe we wanted to check just one more online store for pricing, or visit Consumer Reports. Maybe the baby started crying and you had to leave the screen to tend to its needs. Or maybe you just didn’t make it ‘over the fence’ – weren’t quite convinced enough to click the ole buy button.

So you left the site, and went about your business.

Now we all can see that a person who engages in such behavior is still a great prospect, and that marketing resources spent against him or her are likely to yield a high return. So a whole retargeting industry has risen up to help you capitalize on it.

The challenge of retargeting is that the number of people who visit your site and don’t buy isn’t huge, at least in terms of the total category user base. There’s only so much money you can spend on retargeting.

The question is, ‘Is there a way to get those retargeting rates of return, on a significantly broader scale?

A company called Buysight believes it has the answer. This New York- and Silicon Valley-based start-up has figured out an ingenious way to target more genuine category and brand intenders, delivering results that rival those for retargeting, but with much larger universes. And you buy it CPC, just like Search! I first learned about them when Catalyst S+F did a small project for them last Fall, and was impressed at how much there there was there. (They are no longer a client.)

CMO Jeff Weitzman puts it like this: “Audiences don’t buy things, people do. Buyer Targeting is different from BT in that it looks at an individual’s real-time SHOPPING behaviors, not broad audience interest segments. And it’s different than retargeting in that it’s not based solely on a visit to a single site. Buyer Targeting focuses on predictive modeling off a large set of shopping-specific behaviors that allow us to know the purchase intent of a given individual in real time and with high accuracy.”

There are four components to the Buysight model:

•Real-Time Shopper Marketplace: Buysight has created a data coop in which retailers and brands share information. This helps the site create real-time buyer profiles for millions of consumers. Now, you get first crack at your site visitors. But if you present them with a number of messages after they visit and they don’t respond, then your dollars move on, and other retailers and brands are given a crack at them. So the retailer doesn’t suffer by sharing users, but can benefit from being able to target other retailers’ “nonresponders.” Nifty swifty, hunh? Yet again I could kick myself for not thinking of this first. Once again proving the adage, “Those who can’t…write blog posts about those who can.:
•Buyer Intent Map: Buysight analyzes the shopping interests of the majority of online consumers, and develops a “Buyer Intent Map” for each. This map enables the company to identify confirmed shoppers in the categories that interest them. These maps form the foundation of the service.
•Bid-Based CPC Ad Model: You pay for Buysight banners in the same way you would search words. You set the parameters of a campaign, identify a bid price, and you are off to the races. Analytics help you identify insights and optimize your program to drive greater performance and scale over time.
•Dynamic Creative: Because a more custom creative execution including the actual item the consumer desires is proven to be more effective at driving conversion, Buysight offers dynamic creative units that grab appropriate photos, descriptions, and pricing from site feeds. Thus they are optimized at the product level and can also show related products, special or limited time offers, and price comparisons.

The “gimme” prospects for Buysight are online retailers. Because retail’s the place where the financial benefits are the clearest and the fastest coming. But Buysight can also have relevance in brand campaigns where the client is seeking to increase its mindshare with category hand raisers.

Not possible handraisers.

Not people that may perhaps possibly be handraisers.

But actual people with their hands in the air.

And how cool is that?

It’s early days yet for these folks. They have their A round, and have signed a number of major online and brick and mortar retailer clients to use the service on an ongoing basis.

Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.

Posted on: 04-16-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

The Companies That Interest iMedia Agency Summit Attendees – Part One of Four (A through C) 0

Thanks to iMediaConnection for publishing this first.

One of the new traditions of the Agency Only Day at iMedia Summit is to survey attendees about the things that most intrigue them for the months ahead. This year, we surveyed the agency leaders asking the following question:

We’d like to get the group sharing about the innovations they have found/are impressed with. Are there specific new companies/offerings you find particularly intriguing at the moment and are seriously considering for use in 2011?

In total, the group identified 21 companies they found noteworthy. The key themes seem to be analytics, automation, and simplification, which makes a lot of sense in our increasingly fragmented environment.

Because several of the companies were new to me, and on the principle that there may be others in the iMedia Connection audience who could not attend the event but still might find these companies interesting, I put together the following summary. Before anyone contacts me wondering why their company wasn’t on the list: If your company is on the list, its’ because you were listed in at least one survey response. If you aren’t, it’s because no one listed you in their survey response.

AdKeeper: is a virtual clipping service that enables consumers to clip ads that interest them for later review. AdKeeper overlays a “keep button” on every ad you see as you browse the web. If you are interested in the info, or video, or offer in an ad, you simply click the keep button and it is placed in your AdKeeper. Yu can later review these offers, send them to friend, and print them. Here’s the explanatory video:

Better Advertising is a privacy and choice platform for media delivered through advanced targeting. It gives businesses an easy, standard method to provide evidence of compliance with industry guidelines and provide consumers with more transparency into, and control over the interest-based advertising (another term for BT) they receive. By empowering consumers and earning their trust, businesses build their brands, participate in BT with confidence and generate better advertising results.

Clear Saleing is a marketing optimization engine that helps agencies and marketers measure the success and impact of various digital marketing efforts, and optimize the mix based upon profitability. Best suited to online purchases, the offering tracks profitability across media, ensures the impact of various media are accurately attributed, and helps optimize digital plans with a portfolio perspective. Get the sponsored Forrester report on the profit impact of Clear Saleing here.

Many of us are already familiar with Clear Spring as they have been around for a while. Their message for advertisers today is as an “Audience Platform” that enables advertisers to reach the right users at the times they are ready to act. They focus on two kinds of audience aggregation: intent-based segments at various points in the purchase cycle, and influence segments composed of people likely to share messages to social media. These super sharers help brands generate a greater virality in social media. Clearspring segments/data are available through the leading demand side platforms. The basis of their data collection and segmentation is gathered from their “Add This” button network that makes content sharing easier. By collecting data at the point of share, Clearspring gets a strong picture of people’s interests, intents, and passions.

Clovr Media is a consumer service that lets consumers send offers directly to their credit or loyalty cards. These Card Linked Offers (CLOs) replace coupons, digital coupons, and other tangible discount media. They also make the results of online promotional activity trackable with 100% attribution. There are consumer advantages, of course, but also tremendous advantages for manufacturers and retailers. The process of manually dealing with printed coupon redemption is one that resembles the children’s game Mousetrap, so having it all occur digitally is a boon for all. Here’s the vid that explains it all.

ChaCha is a mobile answers service that lets consumers ask questions from a variety of locations (mobile, iPad, PC) and receive answers quickly from human guides. Advertisements support the service and are delivered in text messages, as graphical phone ads, as sponsored online results, and as in app ads. A sponsored frost and Sullivan white paper on how brands can work with ChaCha is available from this page.

Posted on: 01-3-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer