• by Tyler Loechner , August 8, 2013

OneSpot, a content advertising platform, is expected to announce an addition to their platform this morning called the "Content Sequencing Engine." Essentially, the upgrade to the platform will allow content marketers to programmatically retarget potential consumers down a "funnel," starting with awareness and ending with purchase intent. The platform will automatically place content-driven advertisements to specific users based on where they are in the funnel.

OneSpot's Founder Matt Cohen spoke with RTM Daily and gave a demo of the platform and its new features. He started off by showing an eMarketer figure which says content marketing is the number one priority for marketers this year. "The challenge is actually getting people to see the content," he said. "Not just see it, but get it to the right person, at the right place, at the right time."

Cohen said that OneSpot uses their own real-time bidding (RTB) engine - essentially a RTB trading desk - to buy inventory on "about 20 different exchanges." The idea behind the platform's new technology is to leverage the existing infrastructure of online advertising with content management systems.

Check out the image to the right to help see how this works. The top of the funnel is meant to gauge interest - "category interest," as it's labeled in the picture. These initial impressions will be shown to people that visit similar sites as existing consumers, or potential consumers from an advertisers' whitelist, etc.

If the consumer shows interest in the first advertisement, they will move to the second part of the funnel - "product consideration," as it's labeled. Because OneSpot operates via RTB exchanges, these consumers can be retargeted for "weeks or even months," Cohen said. This is important because it means that content marketers can slowly work their potential consumers down the funnel. In theory, the content marketer can make the funnel as short or as long as they'd like, but the end of the funnel is home to impressions meant to drive "purchase intent."

Cohen and Adam Weinroth, CMO of OneSpot, gave RTM Daily about five different definitions for their company. What they like is to be called a "content advertising platform," which shows how the company is mixing content marketing and advertising.