WebRelevance, Inc., a Seattle-based software and services company, has announced an alliance with MSNBC.com and MSN Shopping to provide contextual advertising services. Under the agreement,
WebRelevance's technology will evaluate MSNBC.com stories on select portions of the site and serve targeted MSN Shopping advertisements on those pages. "Why show a customer an ad for life insurance
when they are showing interest in a Pocket PC?" said Bill Reller, co-founder, president and CEO of WebRelevance. "Contextual advertising" builds on the success of paid search, but WebRelevance takes
the targeted advertisements beyond the search pages, using its RelevanceServer platform, which evaluates the context of any Web page and then delivers ads targeted at the page's content. For example,
MSNBC.com customers reading an article about a recent software virus will see advertisements for anti-virus software, while users reading about Civil War history will see advertisements for books that
document the Civil War.
