• by Vivianne Lapointe , July 23, 2008

One of a media planner's greatest assets is knowing the competitor's strategy. Vishal Sharma and Devaraj Southworth, cofounders of Yureekah, have built a business on capturing this information for battling planners. They developed the first search engine for "real-time competitive analysis of online advertising," providing an easy-to-access, manageable overview of any brand's current display ads and where they're running. "Advertising, especially digital advertising, is moving more toward what I call 'the advertising of intentions,'" says Sharma. "The market is flooded with options. Today, there are hundreds of ad networks and thousands of local and national publishers from which agencies have to make decisions," Sharma says.

The engine's most innovative feature is the one that identifies what brands are planning on a geo-targeted basis. It's possible to track, for instance, what Blackberry is doing only in the United States, or only in India, or worldwide. "This feature is unique in its own way as media planners today cannot execute this kind of multi-geo-targeting research, simply because the inventory changes for each country, and instantaneously at that," Sharma says. Yureekah's site, developed by 30Seven Holdings, was readied this spring. The beta, which will include search and a few other interesting components, is slated to be released by September.