• by August 25, 2004

Some news from PointRoll today--the rich media provider has introduced a new polling feature called Pollster. It allows Web users to participate in polls on pop culture trivia, movies, brands, or news events and compare their responses.

When online ads are viewed, Pollster reports interactive survey results. Survey participants get to see how their response compares to other responses, while advertisers glean little bits of intelligence about their brands, products, and positioning. It's a nifty feature, and PointRoll is surely onto something here.

The emergence of word-of-mouth marketing vis-à-vis two of its most visible proponents--Pete Blackshaw of Intelliseek, and Jonathan Carson, of BuzzMetrics--sets the stage for a new generation of data collection and analysis. Methodologies and techniques to quantify word-of-mouth marketing are also beginning to emerge. Marketers that figure out how to build engaging interactive features into their ads, promotions, and sponsorships will be ahead of the curve. Extrapolating meaning and significance from user interactions will be a challenge, but something marketers can't afford to ignore.

PointRoll isn't alone in building a polling feature. Eyeblaster says it will offer user polling in the October release of Rich Media Platform 5.7. Eyeblaster says the polling feature will allow Web surfers to cast votes and check in for real-time results from within ad units. The company also says the polling feature can support two different polls within the same ad.

As for Pollster, PointRoll COO Chris Saridakis said in a statement: "Polling connects the advertiser directly to the opinion of the target, and our functionality links the two unobtrusively."

"Simply put, the basic rationale for polling is that humans have an innate drive to compare themselves to others," said PointRoll's vice president of marketing Mitch Rose. "Sharing views and asking friends, neighbors, even strangers what they think or feel about an issue or problem helps us get a general feel for the opinions of those around us."

That's very true. There's also a similar premise at work behind the popular book "The Influentials: One American in Ten Tells the Other Nine How to Vote, Where to Eat, and What to Buy," by Jon Berry and Ed Keller. We all have "influentials" in our lives, people from whom we seek opinions and with whom we share our views.

Many of us seek affirmation or advice from online community sites and networks--venues like Tribe, Friendster, and others. And then there are the blogs. In the era of consumer-empowered and distributed media, buzz around brands can rise phoenix-like one day, and fall flat the next ... Consumers are fast, loose, and in control.