• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 3, 2011

Simpli.fi released an offering in its demand-side platform (DSP) that allows advertisers to target ads based on "instant recency" that company CEO Frost Prioleau defines as the period of time that ads serve on a Web page following a click on a search result. This change allows marketers to immediately target searchers the instant they land on a page selected from their search results. It unravels one of the biggest mysteries that arises when using search data to instantly target ads to consumers searching across the Web, which DSP companies like DataXu continually try to solve.

After talking for months about the changing role of DSPs, Prioleau reached out to MediaPost to explain the new tool supporting Simpli.fi's search-retargeting technology. He said advertisers can begin the campaign with a short window -- a second -- and lengthen the time as the campaign runs. The platform provides reporting details to determine the best length of time for specific campaigns.

Within 50 milliseconds, the technology needs to respond to the bid auction, but it only has 30 milliseconds to look at the search terms coming from the referring URL and match it up with an advertisement, Prioleau said.

Advertisers can optimize automotive campaigns with longer recency windows, and business travel campaigns with shorter windows. Prioleau said the ability to vary the length of time an ad will serve after a click helps marketers to gain better performance on campaigns and insight in the purchase funnel.

The capability enables advertisers to target searchers within minutes of their search activity -- including five, fifteen, and thirty minutes, up to a month, but it also provides the ability to vary bids for ads targeted at users searching now vs. those who searched at some time in the past.

Prioleau said Simpli.fi’s scale remains a key feature to the company's recency-based targeting capabilities. He believe the instant search retargeting in a RTB environment enables advertisers to achieve the effectiveness of short recency as campaign increase in size and reach. An RTB environment bidding across all of the supply-side platforms provides marketers with hundreds of billions of impressions and hundreds of millions of unique users, and in turn, larger and more sustainable campaigns.

Does the fact that RTB moves into search retargeting work to provide better conversion rates? You tell me. I can just simply tell you the role of DSPs continues to change.

I have been told by some of the experts that the biggest problem with integrating search data into DSP platforms has been gaining access to instant data as consumers search to effectively target ads. Perhaps this will become a discussion for those attending the Search Insider Summit in December. Will I see you there?