Gurbaksh Chahal, the serial entrepreneur who started behavioral targeting firm Blue Lithium and virtual payments provider gWallet today unveiled his latest venture: RadiumOne, an ad network promising better results by mining the social graph to target ads. The startup will tap into the data that people share through social networks (excluding Facebook), links, blog posts, videos and other online sources and figure out which consumers most closely match a brand's customer base based on how they interact with each other. People who know each other and share common interests will be segmented into "social clusters" that can be targeted by marketers. RadiumOne will then model lookalikes of these groups based on proprietary algorithms. "That means we can build a huge audience for advertisers very quickly and still bring unprecedented targeting to these huge campaigns," said Chahal. The ad system in particular aims to leverage the influence of brand advocates through "social retargeting" techniques to identify consumers who share a link to the current customer base and serve them an ad they are more likely to interact with. Based on testing so far, RadiumOne says it is delivering ad conversion rates up to five times that of typical display ads. And the company is so confident it can deliver improved ad efficiency, that it is launching with a pledge to refund the full cost of campaigns that run on the new network. The guarantee almost seems an acknowledgement that RadiumOne has to do something different to cut through the noise of hundreds of ad networks all claiming to slice and dice data better than the rest to serve up relevant ads. "The world doesn't necessarily need another ad network. What we need is a better ad network. The behavioral targeting used by today's ad networks is very limited," said Chahal. "RadiumOne will look at new sets of social data that have not been used in the past to target ads." Among the new types of data the ad network will sift is user data from gWallet, the company Chahal started in 2009 that distributes marketing offers from through gaming applications on sites like Facebook and MySpace. By signing up for trial subscriptions or filling out brief surveys, players can gain virtual currency for buying in-game items. gWallet now has 75 million monthly unique visitors and has attracted 135 brands, according to Chahal. But RadiumOne will become the parent company that will eventually encompass various ad categories, in which gWallet will focus on social media and social games. "There will be synergy between RadiumOne and gWallet and we will leverage the connections we have already made so that advertisers and publishers can work together across both platforms," said Chahal. Unlike existing social ad networks such as Lotame that serve ads within social media, RadiumOne will focus on delivering ads across comScore 500 sites, and plans to announce some exclusive partnerships in the next few weeks. In terms of avoiding privacy issues, Chahal says RadiumOne is relying on standard Web cookies for tracking rather than more controversial methods like Flash cookies or other types of beacons considered to be overly intrusive. "We care about people's intent, not their identity," said Chahal. "Essentially, we're just picking up where behavioral targeting left off and applying more prevalent social data into the mix." In that vein, Chahal's non-compete agreement with Yahoo following the $300 million sale of Blue Lithium in 2007 just expired last week, freeing him to launch RadiumOne.
Gurbaksh Chahal, the serial entrepreneur who started behavioral targeting firm Blue Lithium and virtual payments provider gWallet today unveiled his latest venture: RadiumOne, an ad network promising better results by mining the social graph to target ads. The startup will tap into the data that people share through social networks (excluding Facebook), links, blog posts, videos and other online sources and figure out which consumers most closely match a brand's customer base based on how they interact with each other. People who know each other and share common interests will be segmented into "social clusters" that can be targeted by marketers. RadiumOne will then model lookalikes of these groups based on proprietary algorithms. "That means we can build a huge audience for advertisers very quickly and still bring unprecedented targeting to these huge campaigns," said Chahal. The ad system in particular aims to leverage the influence of brand advocates through "social retargeting" techniques to identify consumers who share a link to the current customer base and serve them an ad they are more likely to interact with. Based on testing so far, RadiumOne says it is delivering ad conversion rates up to five times that of typical display ads. And the company is so confident it can deliver improved ad efficiency, that it is launching with a pledge to refund the full cost of campaigns that run on the new network. The guarantee almost seems an acknowledgement that RadiumOne has to do something different to cut through the noise of hundreds of ad networks all claiming to slice and dice data better than the rest to serve up relevant ads. "The world doesn't necessarily need another ad network. What we need is a better ad network. The behavioral targeting used by today's ad networks is very limited," said Chahal. "RadiumOne will look at new sets of social data that have not been used in the past to target ads." Among the new types of data the ad network will sift is user data from gWallet, the company Chahal started in 2009 that distributes marketing offers from through gaming applications on sites like Facebook and MySpace. By signing up for trial subscriptions or filling out brief surveys, players can gain virtual currency for buying in-game items. gWallet now has 75 million monthly unique visitors and has attracted 135 brands, according to Chahal. But RadiumOne will become the parent company that will eventually encompass various ad categories, in which gWallet will focus on social media and social games. "There will be synergy between RadiumOne and gWallet and we will leverage the connections we have already made so that advertisers and publishers can work together across both platforms," said Chahal. Unlike existing social ad networks such as Lotame that serve ads within social media, RadiumOne will focus on delivering ads across comScore 500 sites, and plans to announce some exclusive partnerships in the next few weeks. In terms of avoiding privacy issues, Chahal says RadiumOne is relying on standard Web cookies for tracking rather than more controversial methods like Flash cookies or other types of beacons considered to be overly intrusive. "We care about people's intent, not their identity," said Chahal. "Essentially, we're just picking up where behavioral targeting left off and applying more prevalent social data into the mix." In that vein, Chahal's non-compete agreement with Yahoo following the $300 million sale of Blue Lithium in 2007 just expired last week, freeing him to launch RadiumOne.
How do you share insights from nine panelists spending 50 minutes discussing what works with social media? You don't. But given that I was one of the nine, I can at least share one person's perspectives, including answers to questions that weren't even asked. Last week, I joined the Social Media Face-Off at the Direct Marketing Association's DMA:2010 conference in San Francisco. Questions were sent to panelists in advance, and after jotting down my own responses, I solicited input from my colleagues at 360i. Below are highlights from our collective answers, including invaluable input from Orli Sharaby, Christine Hsu, and Andy Amendola. Thanks to moderator Sean Muzzy and fellow panelists Brian Solis, David Marsey, Jeff Hilimire, Michael Friedman, Avi Savar, Chris Cunningham, Sloane Kelley, and Vivek Sodera. With any luck, others among this brilliant group will share their perspectives too. On to the questions: 1. How do you ensure you're generating meaningful insights from your social activity? Understand your goals first so you can constantly evaluate if the insights are actually meaningful. If you know what kinds of insights you need, you can create a program designed to deliver them. Look for any opportunity to provide more measurement. For instance, if you're measuring traffic coming from social channels, are you fully tracking what people are doing once they get to the landing page? 2. What is the most effective way for an organization to manage social media? First, you need buy-in from senior leadership in your organization. You also need a mix of people involved. spanning marketing (including advertising, promotion, events, and public relations, among others), research and development, customer service, web development, and human resources. Some organizations do well with a more centralized focus, such as a social media nerve center, while others spread out responsibility across departments, brands, and locations. Allocate enough resources in terms of manpower and budget. 3. Where does social best fit in terms of branding, acquisition, or relationship management? It can play a role in all three. The difference is that for relationship management, there's very little that compares with social media's depth of engagement and the power to turn consumers into advocates. For branding and acquisition, social media can play a crucial role, but there are also other effective ways to achieve results. 4. What's the best way for an organization to determine how much they invest in social media? Benchmark your own success. Keep an eye on competitors. Align spending with your goals. Since social marketing tends to be about broader programs rather than short-term campaigns, consider customer lifetime value. Also consider the cost of not having ongoing social media initiatives. As Charlene Li noted in her book "Open Leadership," "Another way to frame the issue is: What is the return on investment on your fire insurance policy? You wouldn't even contemplate going without it!" 5. How big should an organization's social media team be? What should they outsource? There's no single way to decide this. Marketers need to assess their core competencies, and then review agencies' and vendors' capabilities to evaluate what can't be done in-house and what can be done better by others. Marketers can get creative to maximize their internal resources. I heard of one national retailer that built a small social marketing team in-house by running a user-generated video contest for its thousands of employees. Hundreds of submissions came in and the few winners wound up taking on a bit of extra work for a bit of extra pay -- but more importantly, because they were excited to do it. The retailer still works with agencies, though. Also important: there needs to be at least someone internally who can muster resources, set the overall direction, and bring everyone in-house and externally together. 6. What are the biggest challenges in measuring the effectiveness of social media? How can you overcome them? There is no shortage of ways to measure social media; I counted over 100. The bigger challenges are tying metrics to business objectives and aligning metrics with what marketers are measuring across all forms of media. There are a lot of ways marketers can get around this, from weighted scorecards to determining the value provided by consumers engaging in social media. All of this requires a much longer answer, so we can revisit this later. 7. How can you determine "real" business impact from social? The previous answers address this, but so does MediaPost coverage of a study from Chadwick Martin-Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies. Erik Sass wrote, "The CMB-IMRT survey found that 60% of Facebook users who are fans of a brand are more likely to recommend the brand to friends since they became a fan; the same is true of 79% of Twitter users who follow a brand. Meanwhile 51% of the Facebook fans and 67% of Twitter followers are more likely to buy a brand since they became a fan or follower." 8. If something works, do you do it again? Or do you try to create something better? A lot of social media is about persistence, so you should keep doing it if it works on any level. Test, learn, optimize, build on it, and always be iterating. 9. How can technology power the optimization of social marketing? Technology helps people do their jobs better, whether those jobs include online listening, measurement, influencer relationship management, content management, or web development. Marketers shouldn't lean on technology as a crutch, but understanding what technology can do can expand the horizons of social programs. 10. Simply put, what works? Two things: authenticity and awesomeness. The rest, as they say, is commentary.
I am a member of the Black Student Association on Ball State's campus. Every meeting, once a week, we have a "Real Talk" segment of the meeting where we discuss issues in our community. This week a group of members organized skits to represent social networking awareness. One skit was about a group of girls who were avid Facebook users. One girl posed as the "holy type" who was church bound. The other two girls were party animals. The church girl was trying to encourage the other girls to attend church and "get wasted in the spirit." The church girl left the party-goers behind, and they talked about her behind her back. The girls discussed how their friend was fake, because her Facebook page was full of profanity, incriminating photos and inappropriate comments, but she claimed to be so religious. The moral of this skit was to present the world with the truth of who you really are. You should be aware of how you present yourself to the world. Not only does this hurt your reputation socially, but on a business level as well. Many employers look at Facebook pages to help decide whether or not they want to hire candidates. Controversial photos and comments could hinder or cripple your future. If you are already employed, in some cases, if you make poor choices you could risk losing your job. I really appreciated the fact that other peers viewed this topic as important and I think it helped in spreading the awareness of social networking etiquette. Most of our parents assume we millennial don't think about our futures and are unaware of the dangers of social networking. I was happy to see a room of at least 100 students expressing their concerns and offering advice to each other on how we can conduct ourselves in a positive manner online. I hope this trend continues and trickles down to those in high school who seem to live online.