@BrookeAker

Even if the LUMAscape layout can’t give a complete explanation of the interactions within the ad industry, it is certainly one of the best references to illustrate the complexity of the display ad technology space. As contextual analysis and semantic data provider, we’re listed within “data aggregators”.

In our space of interactions—which range from Publishers & SSPs to Ad Networks & Ad Exchanges, Advertisers, Agencies, Trading Desks and DSPs—we offer a solution that automatically extracts the meaning in text, providing our partners and customers with rich, fast and flexible contextual data that improves advertising reach and lift. Reach and lift are improved through the power of semantic processing– the ability to distinguish one word with many meanings (lift) and many words that equal the same meaning (reach).

Online advertising budgets increase each year, but targeting and matching content to ads is harder than ever.  Effective online ads must be related to the content with pinpoint accuracy.  At the same time, brands must be protected from negative associations. ADmantX matches ads to content with accuracy, keeping readers engaged with content, maximizing impressions, utilizing all content, and responding to companies’ needs for online brand protection.

In a nutshell, we avoid the mistakes of keyword based systems for better matching, and higher click-through rates (CTRs). And we enable the use of all content for matching ads. This clears inventory and maintains higher ad prices overall. For publishers and advertisers alike, semantic targeting keeps impressions as premium ads.

Contact us today to see what we can do for your business!

@fspaggiari

We’re currently exhibiting on the ad:tech London show floor in booth #209. If you have planned to attend today, we hope to see you there.

We’re featuring demonstration of our semantic advertising Web service that allows publishers and advertisers to develop more effective online advertising campaigns.

In particular, we could talk about a new perspective on the relationship between contextual advertising and Big Data, starting from the state of the art of online advertising in the Big Data era to the benefits of semantic contextualization for cookie-less ad targeting.

There’s still time to request an in-person meeting at the show; simply fill out this form!

@fspaggiari

The world’s most innovative technology companies will demonstrate their newest offerings and engage with marketing leaders throughout the Advertising Week Experience (AWE) which will be housed at The Times Center and staged concurrently with Advertising Week IX in New York City October 1-5 2012.

Advertising Week is the world’s premier annual gathering of marketing and communications leaders each year in New York City and ADmantX will be the only contextual data provider showcased during the show. We are proud to have been selected and would be delighted to meet with you there.

In the meantime, you can learn more about us reading this blog entry that came out recently on the AWE social website or listening to this podcast, a really enjoyable conversation between Doug Zanger from the AWE and my CMO at ADmantX, J. Brooke Aker.

@scagliarini

I am writing this post as my train pulls out of the Santa Lucia station in Venice, where I’ve had the pleasure of spending the past two days as part of the Digital Economy Forum (#DEF2012).  Sponsored by the US Embassy in Italy, the DEF organized a series of events, all geared toward a more robust digital ecosystem in Italy. This evening, as Venice fades into the background, I wanted to share my thoughts on what has been an interesting couple of days and a very well organized, timely conference (a special thanks to Sandy Polu):

Italy and the digital world, part 1: Despite what people may believe, Italy is home to a large pool of quality software engineers and entrepreneurs. While the program was filled with interesting new companies who have worked hard to raise capital in hopes of becoming the next Glancee (an Italian company bought by Facebook), I expected to see a greater representation of the programmers and hackers among the “entrepreneurs to be.” At similar events, this group usually outweighs the MBA types, and, as a former programmer-turned-MBA-type, I’d like to see more Italian coders making their voices and ideas heard at these meetings.

Italy and the digital world, part 2: Despite Italy’s vibrant tech industry, I’m afraid that real understanding and support for our industry still lags behind at the government level. The speech of Minister of Economic Development (and former banker) Passera was more suitable for the general electorate (promises of solving the digital divide,open government data and updated websites), than for  the crowd of Italian digital entrepreneurs who want inspiration, and concrete signs that those at the top understand our new world. While I appreciate the government’s acknowledgement, I had hoped for more signs that, like the Obama administration is constantly trying to do, our government is perceptive to the needs of this important and growing sector. For me, this was a missed opportunity.

The Speakers: Speakers included a nice mix of Italian and international companies, and the big guys were there too. Google spoke first, but instead of showing this international audience of entrepreneurs, investors and startuppers why they should see Google as a partner (which I would expect and hope to see given the discussions about privacy) and not an enemy, Google spent a lot of time explaining and promoting Google+. I know the days of “don’t be evil” are gone, and I’m not in a position to criticize their strategy, but as an old fan of the company, their transformation into the next IBM is impossible to ignore.

Instead, Facebook did a great job of showcasing companies who have made the most of the assets Facebook makes available, and called for revolutionaries (“Che Guevaras”) to join their movement. I hope this will translate to more and different applications rather than time-wasting games…

Among the most interesting companies and products who took the stage, I definitely suggest  following Applix and Vertical Response. These companies offer a potential innovation boost for  small- and medium-sized enterprises by  providing them with innovative marketing tools and apps  to help put them at par with bigger companies. My favorite presentations instead were those of Andraz Tori of Zemanta (they have a great product; try it if you’re a blogger) and Eleonora Viviani of Stereomood. As a music fan, I’ve spent years creating the perfect mixtape for every situation, so I understand the solution they’re striving for. From now on, their “Sunday morning” selection will be at the top of my weekend rotation.

But until then, I’ll go with this ( Relax) for the next two hours.

@fspaggiari

In response to our recent award, announced a couple of weeks ago at CeBit, we had the chance to speak with Otilia Otlacan, the founder and editor of AdOperationsOnline about how ADmantX is helping address some of the challenges facing display advertising today.

One of the most important features of ADmantX is that we don’t use any cookies or behavioral tracking and instead, our technology focuses on online page content: topics (based on an IAB compliant taxonomy), feelings, intentions and entities. This is a real advantage in addressing one of the biggest challenges—the mis-match of content to ads. Also, since during the ad match process ADmantX doesn’t track the movement of online users, this is a transparent way to maintain the benefits of targeting without invading consumers’ privacy.

Otilia tried ADmantX and found it “eerily accurate” – and that’s what we like to hear :-) Another strength of ADmantx is our ability to identify not just words, but more importantly, context and emotion. We’re able to pinpoint content related to concepts or emotions regardless of whether a specified ‘keyword’ is present or not.

For example, a new smartphone might want to target content related to feelings such as “modern” and “success”. ADmantX can return the content related to “success” independently whether the keyword is present or not because the semantic understanding of the content helps to really identify the mood of the page.

You can read the full interview with ADmantX CEO Luca Scagliarinir here.

I would also like to take this opportunity to inform you that tomorrow, our CMO, J. Brooke Aker will join the OMMA Global panel discussion “Driving Conversion The Display Way” to discuss online display advertising issues and challenges.

If you’re in San Francisco tomorrow, I hope you’ll join us! Click here to read more about the event:  “Digital Moneyball!”

@fspaggiari

Today marks a special day for us. It is the one year anniversary of the first time our semantic advertising Web service was available to the public!

We’d like to celebrate our first birthday by inviting you to access ADmantX directly and try our service here http://webservice.admantx.com/. The webservice site allows you to explore and test concepts for coverage and recall.

You can also semantically analyze a single URL from our Website homepage http://www.admantx.com/ (after entering your URL, click go. It’s really that simple.)

And last but not least… if you are interested in a piece of our history, you may enjoy the picture below. That’s what our CTO Antonio Linari has drawn freehand for me to let me understand the ADmantX interface he had in his mind.  “Really cool” I thought.  Hope you think so too.

@scagliarini

We know we’ve created  a  great semantic advertising Web service

… but it’s always nice to  hear others say it, too :-)

Last Tuesday at the CeBIT, we were awarded the European Seal of e-Excellence in the Platinum category from EMF, the European network promoting excellence in the digital economy.

This award confirms the importance of innovative services to monetize online content, and for us, it is both a great honor and a great responsibility to be selected as a leader in the digital field.

As a team, we are constantly exploring and trying new things, and it is in this hard work and dedication to customer satisfaction that we share responsibility for the ultimate goal — ensuring our customers are completely satisfied. So…. Team: Thank you! And here’s to our continued success!

@fspaggiari

In a few days, we will attend the Technology For Marketing & Advertising conference in London where we will launch a new feature that allows our users to directly try our contextual advertising web service semantic analysis.

We’ve been testing our new “copy, paste and test it” functionality (that’s how we call it internally), and we’ve invited users like you to take part in our tests (you may have already received our invitation or read this other post.)

To test the new functionality, visit www.admantx.com, and enter a URL in the blue search box:

Once you have clicked “Go” after copying and pasting your URL…

… ADmantX will display the results of its semantic page-level analysis and contextualization, showing categories, topics and emotions present in the page content.

What do you think? Contact us or request a demo now if you would like to discuss your experience with us or to understand more.

If you are planning to visit the TFM&A show, we hope you will join us on the exhibit floor in booth #213!

@fspaggiari

This year, we’ve thrown our hat into the ring for the “European Seal of e-Excellence 2012”, which rewards ICT and Digital Media companies with an excellent track record in innovation marketing.

Background on the ADmantX Semantic Advertising Display Service
The holy grail of matching ads to a page has been described as knowing “the right consumer, at the right time, at the right frame of mind”. Behavioral Targeting and Audience Buying can certainly take care of the right consumer part of the equation. IP sniffing and a few other tricks more or less take care of time and place. But if you are concerned about brand safety and improved response, you are missing a key metric: context.

When you hear “contextual” as a targeting approach remember this is really nothing more than a dressed up way of saying keywords. And keywords are notoriously bad at true contextual understanding.

The use of semantic technology to establish context is really about correcting and expanding on keyword understanding. Both correcting (disambiguating common, multi-definition words for their in-sentence meaning) and expanding (looking for the story-arc across all the content) is a classic segmentation scheme. The deeper the segments, the more potential matches, the better the accuracy of the ad match.

Take this accuracy-based approach and extend it now into the realm of emotions, buyer intentions, people, places, things, brands, standard categories and dynamic categories and you have a very rich data stream that is in fact the consumers’ frame-of-mind in the final moments before the ad match is made. Combining a semantic set of data with audience data and you will get the 40% improved engagement.

For additional information on the ADmantX Semantic Advertising Display Solutions, refer to our Website, in which we offer some additional insight into the problems that the ADmantX solves as well as practical uses for our service, and try the power of semantic targeting right now.

As you can imagine, it would be an honor to be selected from among a long list of entries for this, one of the most prestigious European and global in the digital space and online marketing (and of course should we win the award overall you will be the first to know.)

FINGERS CROSSED :-)

  @scagliarini

I have spent the last few days in London attending the Ad Trading Summit and ad:tech London. These experiences confirmed that the online advertising sector is going through a continuous transformation with no end in sight. Here are some common threads that emerged from these events:

1. Awareness about ad trading, and the related topic of targeting, is growing. The Summit had more people in the audience than expected, and at ad:tech, presentations about these topics (mine included) were crowded with attendees. We cannot yet say that we’re moving towards mass adoption of ad trading, as people aren’t sure if this is the future, or just a fad. This requires, for the foreseeable future, that providers offering these platforms and services must continue to focus on evangelizing the market. It’s therefore safe to say that in terms of significant revenue from mass adoption, we’re not quite there yet.
   
   
2. Targeting is very important for agencies and brands, but other players in the ecosystem (traditional ad networks and publishers, for example) do not feel the urgency to provide a full set of targeting data. While I understand the reasons for this resistance (“we already have so many things to do and are struggling to keep up with the competition”), I suppose that this means that data providers should still be very careful about over extending themselves or investing too much before the demand is there (there are still signs that the demand will become huge.)
   
   
3. Lots of confusion around DSPs and trading platforms in general. All of the buzz and the capital flowing into these companies seem to suggest that they will be the next big thing, but there is not yet proof that relevant publishers are joining the game. Publishers don’t want to repeat the mistake they made a few years ago providing free access to online content. They see ad trading platforms driving further commoditization, driving CPM to the floor and reducing revenue—and therefore are very careful.  There is some evidence that private exchanges / DSPs are an attempt to address this concern.
   
   
4. There is the perception among users (and brands, for that matter) that behavioral targeting is really impacting privacy. Independently, whether the EEC (and the US government) will pass strict legislation to limit these practices, there is a significant risk that these perceptions could cause a backlash against the companies that rely heavily on, or solely on these practices (especially for retargeting, which personally I feel is a really spooky/bad online experience).
   
   
5. Contextual advertising is gaining traction but if companies providing this service focus too much on brand safety, then we are just participating in a race to the bottom. What we should do is to present agencies and brands with a more broad set of features to help them innovate how they present their messages to consumers. Once agencies and brands fully grasp that today they are limited in what they can do, they will demand that ad networks and publishers provide new ways to deliver their messages. It will be more than brand safety, more than topic matching. It will be about matching the message to attributes that are by nature more important for brands: feelings, sentiment, intentions and behaviors. At least this is what we at ADmantX are betting on :-)