• by Tameka Kee , January 17, 2008

Mpire has added a set of "smart" ads to its widget-based ad network, WidgetBucks. The contextually targeted widgets attempt to serve each visitor the optimal ad based on factors like their geographic region and past ad performance--and shift between CPM and PPC pricing to garner the most yield for publishers.

With the first widget, dubbed "YieldSense," Mpire aims to improve contextual targeting by choosing ads from specific product categories based on their past performance. "Say there's an HDTV blog, and YieldSense serves a plasma TV ad first, then an ad for HD-DVD movies," said Matt Hulett, president and CEO of Seattle-based Mpire. "The widget checks to see which one is performing best and then starts serving it accordingly."

Hulett said the system monitors ad performance at least four times per day to ensure that highest-yielding ads are continuously displayed. Mpire has been testing the YieldSense ads with a small group of publishers, including AdMedian, for about a month.

While YieldSense runs on a PPC basis, Mpire's other smart widget geo-targets visitors from over 40 different regions to determine which pricing model would be most effective. A user from Singapore may see a PPC-based ad, while someone from Seattle would be served a CPM ad, and the publisher doesn't have to select regions in advance. "Publishers like one strand of JavaScript to help them relieve all their ad management headaches, and our smart ads delivery system gives it to them," Hulett said.

Since Mpire launched the WidgetBucks network in October 2007, some 40,000 publishers have signed on--and the company recently hit the 1.5 billion monthly impression mark. Hulett says that although the network primarily features bloggers and other long-tail publishers, Mpire is scaling the tech to handle continuously pumping impressions out across entire blog platforms and larger media outlets.