Exponential To Serve Contextual Ads On Tribal Fusion

by Tameka Kee, Sep 26, 2007, 6:00 AM

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Exponential has announced the launch of EchoTopic, a contextual advertising solution that will serve ads onto sites within the Tribal Fusion network according to specific topics--as opposed to keywords.

The online advertising tech and service company has been testing the service with select clients for over a year, opening it up on Wednesday to marketers seeking to target users in the technology, media & entertainment and financial services verticals.

Proprietary tech built into the EchoTopic platform scans and indexes each page in the network, using semantic analysis to determine which "content trees" or topics are most relevant.

The contextual ads will appear when users mouse over a highlighted topic (either as an in-unit text ad or a balloon, depending on publisher choice). Emeryville-based Exponential joins a number of companies offering performance-based ads that are embedded within relevant content on a page--not adjacent to it.

The ad units can incorporate text, graphics and video, and can also be combined with dynamically generated messages to deliver a more customized campaign.

"We've been investing time developing the category channels and sub-channels that we've built into Tribal Fusion," said Alistair Goodman, Exponential's vice president of strategic marketing. "But it's only been about a year since we started using technology that indexes and understands the content of every page--and delivers an ad against it."

Adding EchoTopic brings the company closer to offering the full breadth of online advertising solutions--including local and general search, display, performance marketing and lead generation--moves that big players like Microsoft and Google have recently made to gobble up more marketer dollars.

"We're all moving toward integrated offerings, because the industry is shifting from being tech-focused to being marketing-focused," said Goodman. "Advertisers don't care about bits and bytes, they care about how you help them reach their targeted audience."

According to Justin Weber, managing member of Computing.Net, an IT support and service site, "When it comes to relevant keyword selection, EchoTopic has been head and shoulders above similar offerings. It has been a great, non-intrusive source of incremental revenue for Computing.Net."

Computing.Net, LLC was one of the publishers included in the beta tests, and Exponential chose to begin with the technology vertical to see how well the semantic analysis would fare.

"The goal is to contextualize all 15 content channels and subset channels, an activity that will take us into next year for sure," said Goodman.

EchoTopic ads can be purchased on a CPC basis, and according to Goodman, "the pricing will be demand driven, depending on the vertical, and comparable to other providers in the market."

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