Semantic Targeting
Publishers seeking to monetize their content, want to be able to obtain maximum value without compromising the quality of their content. Traditional keyword based products are incapable of identifying the true context and a page. The result is that ads are incorrectly assigned, as the following real example indicate
- Advertising for a shot putt alongside story of helicopter shot down in Iraq.
- Advertising for Trojan condoms alongside a review of the movie "Troy".
- Advertising for a DIY garden bridge alongside a description of the card game.
- Advertising for a French TV company alongside content on the Panama Canal.
In order to make the difference to existing systems, plainly a radically different approach is needed, and this is what much our research and development has been focused upon. The aim is to bring a new era of coherence to online advertising. Successful approaches will have to use a linguistics-based 'sense engine' which analyses the lexical content of Web pages and links them with relevant advertisements. Calling up a football site would generate only ads related to football. The report of a street stabbing would be associated only with ads to do with crime prevention. These approaches would not replace existing advertising and search technology with their functionality: they would enhance it. Organisations must be able to take advantage of the product without compromising on their investments in pre-existing technology and relationships.
Leveraging Dr, Crystal’ expertise, iSense has been in development since 1997, and received over $8 million in investment; it is now ready for implementation. The task took so long because the research required a team of lexicographers and encyclopedists to work their way through all the words and senses in English that are likely to discriminate contexts, and to give them an appropriate classification. It could not have been done automatically, as computational semantics and stylistics is not yet up to the task. No computer is yet able to distinguish all the senses and nuances involved. Human beings take longer, but the results are better.
iSense is at the forefront of innovating in the advertising sector. From the rapid analysis of the page context, the various products within the iSense portfolio can deliver relevant and targeted advertising to the page. The result to the end user is that far from being an irrelevant distraction, the ads then merge with the content, adding value to the web publisher, as well as enhancing the return to the advertiser.
