Semantics in Advertising
Whilst there's quite a tendency these days to stick 'semantic' in front of almost every word in the dictionary and attempt to create a new industry segment, the related markets of advertising and marketing do actually seem ripe for this sort of engagement.
Ion Interactive President & CTO Scott Brinker, for one, has been active for some time in exploring the role of semantic technologies in marketing. His Chief Marketing Technologist blog makes for often interesting reading.
Today sees 19 year old Italian software company, Expert System, announce the "Launch [of a] New Contextual Advertising Solution With Semantic Intelligence."
On the surface, a release phrased in that way might easily be dismissed as jumping on the 'semantic' band-wagon, but there appears to be substance behind the sometimes over-hyped language.
"The main issue limiting the online advertising market today is the disconnect between advertisement placement and the relevance of the copy. This is due to the reliance on keyword frequency without considering the meaning. Oftentimes, ads may appear on pages that have little significance to the assigned page or may produce counterproductive effects. For example, an ad for a Caribbean vacation package may inadvertently appear near an article about a massive hurricane that ripped through that region. COGITO Advertiser addresses this shortfall"
One need only glance at some of the adverts alongside this blog post to see how right they are as to the limitations in the current approach!
Brooke Aker, recently appointed CEO of Expert System's new US operation, commented;
"Correlating the advertisement to text on the Web page is the only way an ad will generate profit. Through linguistic analysis, COGITO Advertiser provides the only real solution for comprehending the meaning of text and combining it with relevant ads to effectively reach the right customers."
Discussing this with Scott Brinker, he commented;
"The development of semantic algorithms to improve the relevancy of contextual advertising is clearly an area of exciting innovation. This is a top-down approach to achieving some semantic web benefits without requiring site publishers to do much work on their end.
If these efforts prove successful -- significantly improving the efficacy of contextual advertising -- then one wonders if this will incentivize site publishers to also pursue more bottom-up semantic web adoption as well.
When regular businesses can see increased cash from semantic-powered advertising, that's bound to provide long-awaited motivation for semantic web technology more broadly."
I shall be talking with Brooke later this week, for a podcast to be released as part of Talis' ongoing series of executive briefings.