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Customer Comments Find Their Way To Display Ads

Brant-BartonBazaarvoice has released a platform allowing brands to integrate review comments in display ads, similar to the way search engines Google and Microsoft pulled in live Twitter tweets to google.com and bing.com, respectively. It's part of a continued push to capitalize on word-of-mouth marketing (WOM) in digital media.

Built on the Bazaarvoice platform, Bazaarvoice Media combines word-of-mouth content with predictive social data about specific products, services, and the people who use them. The company believes this technology creates connections by matching the sentiment with consumers from others who share similar values, preferences, and concerns.

Bazaarvoice Co-founder Brant Barton will lead a new team to support what he believes continues to become an important market. Barton will oversee Bazaarvoice Media initiatives. He is joined by team member Donnovan Andrews, serving as the group's vice president of media sales and operations responsible for strategic media partner relationships with agencies, brands, and retailers.

Barton told MediaPost that several unnamed brands have begun to use the platform. He also mentioned a pilot for Microsoft Windows 7 that ran in February. "Word of mouth brings a certain amount of believability," he said. "It can potentially remedy the problem with advertising, which is sometimes perceived as not authentic or credible."

When does the amount of information become too much? Marketers walk a fine line when it comes to reaching out to consumers through digital advertising.

Digital media, including WOM, provides new channels for marketers to reach consumers, but eMarketer points to a study from Upstream and YouGov that finds that in the U.S. and in the U.K. an abundance of ads could annoy consumers, alienating them from the brands.

Some 66% of U.S. survey respondents and 65% in the UK would unsubscribe from, ignore or delete promotional messages for consumers who thought advertising messages were too frequent, according to the survey. About three in 10 Web users were unlikely to respond positively to new messages from brands over advertising.

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