Social Signals Create The Next Version Of Behavioral Targeting

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Gurbaksh Chahal believes he's created the next version of behavioral targeting. His company RadiumOne, where he's CEO, recently launched the social sharing platform Po.st to increase targeting based on content being shared.

The platform gives consumers another way to share content across Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, email, and multiple other popular destinations, but it provides publishers with a method to generate revenue and collect data about the content being shared.

Behavioral targeting doesn't scale -- that's its main flaw, according to Chahal. "The game of retargeting is finite," he said. "With social we've been able to figure out that every one person probably shares with between 12 and 15 people. If we can capture those 12 to 15 people and bring them in to the advertiser's doorstep, we're continually adding new users into the funnel."

Po.st takes on other sharing platforms, such as AddThis and ShareThis. The platform collects data on what site visitors share, and puts stats back in the hands of publishers, and can serve up a display ad after someone shares content.

Sharing drives page views and engagement, according to Chahal. The ads that serve up are related to the content shared. So, when someone clicks on a share button an ad unit pops up and 100% of that revenue goes to the publisher.

Chahal, who founded behavioral targeting company BlueLithium, said brands have been focused on retargeting and social. So, he began looking at social data in aggregate and created a platform that creates a circle of people who share the most with each other across the Web. That signal of sharing content identifies consumers who might be interested in becoming customers. It's about connecting with social friends to target ads.

The next version will provide audience data. For example, weather sites will have access to data that shows the number of visitors who leave the site for financial or sports destinations. It will allow publishers to better understand the demographic visiting their Web site.

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1 comment on "Social Signals Create The Next Version Of Behavioral Targeting".

1. Nate Carter from Neustar
   

   commented on: December 7, 2011 at 5:32 p.m.
   There is a lot of noise in the "signals" space with Facebook, Twitter etc. 2 Questions: 1) Is this a defensible platform? 2) As people continue to adapt Ghostery and other privacy browser plugins what will happen to the scale of cookie-based methods?

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