• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, February 4, 2015

Talk to me, just me. That’s the goal. Eyeview is in the personalized online video advertising business -- so in theory, and pretty much in fact, it can suss out the “anonymized” you to figure out who and where you are, and what you like, right down to the color of the car you covet.

Its VideoIQ platform provides video advertising that creates measurable performance by combining video personalization technology, individual consumer data, real-time media-buying and optimization fused with traditional television content.

A lot of this might not look so awesome to you on a computer screen or phone until you stop to consider that when I look at an Eyeview-augmented ad beckoning me to Myrtle Beach while I'm shivering in the Northeast, I’ll see one that references the warm weather down there (“Tired of the cold?”)  But if I lived in Atlanta or Dallas, that ad — on my computer — would likely skip that irrelevant pitch. Other kinds of ads can include reference to area locations, or even, special deals on products the Ace Hardware store thinks somebody like me (but not you) would like.

And so on. Marketers use Eyeview’s vertical-wise data to pinpoint data the way a local TV ad might, but even deeper than that.

Eyeview has been ramping up the last couple of years, infused with a $15 million investment last year, when the privately held company claims its revenues doubled. Its headcount did, for sure, to over 100, including West Naze, the executive director of consumer product goods sales, and Brian Pozesky, the chief marketing officer. At the end of the year, CEO and co-founder Oren Harnevo also tapped Anthony Risicato as its first chief strategy officer, charged, to some degree with spreading the word.

Eyeview does not own the world — yet.

“When we started talking about online marketing, the promise always was: ‘You’re going to speak to me as a consumer one -- one on one, at scale,” Risicato explained in a phone call.  “That was always the promise, but yet for 20 years now we create one or two ads and we basically just flood the market with them.”

But with personalized/localized ads, he continues, “we have first person CRM data. We also know what market segment you live in. We know what you’ve seen before, anonymously, as a viewer. And we can stage a story based upon this constellation of data we know about you.”

The proprietary sauce is Eyeview’s ability to personalize commercials. “No one has gotten close to what we can do, dis-assembling a broadcast video and then re-assembling it with personalized elements,” Risicato says. “In goes one pre-roll, out come 100,000 variants, in just hours.” The other bit of special sauce is matching up those special ads to the right consumer. “That’s where the long-term value is,” he says. Eyeview can even change ads depending on the weather.

Risicato, an industry bright light who came to Eyeview from Tremor Video, says he remembers “when Oren was showing me around, he said, ‘listen we can make 50,000 versions of this ad that covers every single data point and deliver it to the right people and then show it to people who respond to the ad.’ I was like, ‘Isn’t that what we were supposed to be doing?’ “

No doubt a lot of consumers think they’ve been followed quite a lot, without the art and effort Eyeview puts into. To advertisers, though, personalization is what all that engagement talk is all about. “This is outcome based marketing,” Risicato says. “We’re trying to drive results. I’m not terribly interested in just clicks and views and impressions and 'completes.' What we really track is post-impression data. It’s sales, it’s shopping carts, it’s test drives, and in some cases it’s point of sales.”

His background, which includes teaching Shakespeare to college sophomores, “taught me one thing: You have to talk to your clients, or students, in a language they understand, that is meaningful to their world.” So, he says, as he now visits brands and marketers, it’s brand lift and sales he’ll emphasize. Risicato says, “I’m fairly certain the market today is not as fully educated of the glories of personalization as it’s going to be in the next few years.”