• by Laurie Sullivan , July 30, 2009

AudienceScience makes it easier for advertisers to speak directly with potential customers Thursday. It delivered a technology called Audience Relevant Messaging (ARM) that serves up individually personalized ads on the fly. The ad messages are based on individual interests or intent to purchase products and services.

Jeff Hirsch, president and CEO, AudienceScience, says this missing piece fulfills "the last mile," which means assuring that only relevant ads are served up to consumers. "It solves the problem of having to create many ad creatives," he says. "Using dynamic creative generation reduces the cost."

Take, for example, the problem that occurs when consumers abandon an online shopping cart -- when consumers go online, look at items, place them in a shopping cart, and then abandon it for some reason. Studies suggest that online consumers abandon their shopping carts between 50% and 75% of the time, Hirsch says, citing stats from JupiterResearch.

ARM offers advertisers the ability to serve up a "very specific" display ad somewhere else on the Web related to products or services that the consumer showed interest in. If the consumer looked at a pair of red shoes, the ad would include red shoes.

AudienceScience's technology already knows the consumer put the red shoes in the online shopping cart, but for some reason didn't finish the transaction. The ad served up to the consumer after she abandoned the shopping cart could provide information on free shipping to come back and finish the transaction.

This pattern not only occurs in retail, but also automotive, travel, technology and finance. Among a host of uncompleted transactions, advertisers can use the technology to entice back people who began to download a white paper or design a car. Advertisers could use this technology to target ads on any digital device.

Here's how it works: A data feed from the advertiser about a specific item in their catalog would match an image stored in AudienceScience's database. The image, along with related text, populates the ad with specific product information.

Hirsch acknowledges other companies provide a similar service, but says AudienceScience's technology understands and combines consumer interest with intent to drive higher results. He says it not only takes into consideration search behavior, but online and offline shopping history, demographics and geography. The messages are delivered regardless of where the shopper browses across the entire AudienceScience Targeting Marketplace.

Campaigns using dynamically relevant ads "perform better than similar campaigns without dynamic ads and demonstrated improvements in click-throughs and conversions range from 30% to 400%," Hirsch says.