Are you an
advertiser looking to target mothers online with children under 12 who are concerned about obesity to promote a healthy snack food? Or people that don't support drilling in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge but support offshore drilling generally?
If so, Resonate Networks -- a new ad network geared to nonprofit, political and corporate advertisers -- promises to serve
up just the right audience based on highly targeted, if anonymous, profile data focused on political views and attitudes.
"It's really drilling down to people's beliefs and where
they stand on issues," said Bryan Gernert, CEO of Alexandria, Va.-based Resonate, a non-partisan company launched by former Republican and Democratic political strategists including Harold Ickes,
Bill Clinton's former deputy chief of staff and one of Resonate's investors.
Unlike traditional ad networks that target advertising based on a site content or audience demographics,
Resonate combines survey information, online and offline databases and proprietary algorithms to match Web users' political leanings and levels of activism with sites they tend to visit most
often.
"You can identify Web sites that have a preponderance of people who support certain issues," that go beyond obvious issue-oriented or political sites, said Gernert. He added
that Resonate is already working with 500 of about 2,500 sites that correlate strongly with particular issues or audiences with high levels of engagement or influence.
While reluctant to name
sites in its network, he cited Frommers.com and BobVila.com as ones that have been used in campaigns but are not readily associated with any political or social issues. Likewise, an unnamed greeting
card site it works with draws an audience that tends to support energy regulation.
"It comes out of the black box," said Gernert, whose firm also uses traffic data from network
sites to behaviorally target consumers online. Resonate's microtargeting techniques are an outgrowth of methods that co-founder and former Bush Administration political director Sara Taylor used
in the 2004 presidential campaign to target voters.
(Co-founder and Chairman John Brady co-founded the Direct Impact Company, now part of WPP.)
Barack Obama expanded political
microtargeting practices during the 2008 campaign by collecting data from their online volunteers through MyBarackObama.com. But Resonate is taking those techniques from the campaign trail to a
broader group of advertisers at a time when behavioral targeting practices are coming under increased government scrutiny.
Gertner stresses that none of the survey or other data Resonate
sifts to build audience profiles is personally identifiable. "The bottom line is that because we never know who the respondents are we don't have any personally identifiable information in
the model, so we don't think that's an issue," noted Gertner.
In endorsing voluntary self-regulatory standards for behavioral targeting earlier this year, the Federal Trade
Commission said companies refrain from collecting "sensitive" data without users' explicit consent.
It provided certain examples of sensitive information -- financial data, data
about children and Social Security numbers -- but left the term undefined.
Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), chairman of the House Communications, Technology and Internet Subcommittee, said last
month that he plans to prepare legislation regarding online privacy.
For now, Resonate says its approach is getting results. Among the 10 ad campaigns its handled so far, it boasts
eye-popping conversion rates of 20% to 50%, in which a conversion might be a donation or other desired action. For such lofty return on investment, it's charging CPMs that start at $12 and go up
depending on the level of targeting.
Based on those kinds of numbers, Resonate has raised $2 million from Ickes and other investors including Alexander Gage, founder of TargetPost Consulting,
who has handled microtargeting for the Bush White House; Steve McMahon, media consultant and strategist for Howard Dean's 2004 campaign; and political strategist Rich Tarplin.