One More Designated Driver

Today I was struck with the terrible news that a member of my clients team had been killed in a drunk driving accident over the weekend. Whenever you hear such horrible news you're often at a loss of words and paralyzed with denial. In today post, I vow not to be silent. There isn't anything I can do to make the situation better, but hopefully this video will make someone out there think twice before they get behind the wheel drunk.

To Steve's family and all of the people at FreeWheel, I'm sorry for your loss and my prayers are with you.

Football Fans Unite

No matter what your hobby, passion or obscure obsession is, there's definitely a social network centered around it. Today I stumbled upon a social networking site that is perfect for me. I'm a huge football (soccer) fan and spend a good portion of my day obsessing about it. As a matter of fact, I was doing just that when I ran into Footbo, a new social networking site that is 100% dedicated to the WORLD of football.

I knew I loved this site when I read their description: "Whether you're an armchair fan, someone who sleeps, eats, drinks, breathes and dreams football or an amateur player - Footbo is here to provide a place where fans can meet and interact with peers and rivals; receive personalized updates and match information; share knowledge, media and content; and express opinions and emotions. After all, it’s football that makes the world go round!"

Whether or not football makes the world go round, I couldn't ask for anything more out of this site. Instead of getting the latest football news from the inept commentating of Eric Wynalda and John Harkes, I read the daily news from leagues and tournament around the world. I can also read the opinions of various league specialists; for once, the range of opinions actually hold some merit. Footbo allows me to engage in social experience with the people who love football as much as I do.

I was extremely happy to have stumbled upon Footbo, but I kept asking myself why I hadn't found it sooner. Afterall, football is the #1 sport in the world with more people tuning in for the World Cup than the Olympics. Footbo could possibly be the only place in the world where people in the U.S. can get along with a football fan from Iraq. With that being said, I think Footbo really encompasses what a social networking site is supposed to be all about: Bringing people from different parts of the world together to share an environment of similar interest.

Luckily for football fans, the game never stops. Right now we get to chat about the European Championships in Austria and Switzerland. In a couple months we get to talk about the Olympics in China. Shortly after that, we get to debate about Chelseas's new coach Luiz Felipe Scolari and the beginning of the new English Premier League season. For those of us who live in the U.S., we can continue to debate over the quality of the MLS and argue whether or not David Beckham is going to make an impact in America.

All in all, there's something special about sharing a passion with people who live in all different parts of the world irregardless of the politics that keep us publically separated. Social networking sites don't always have to apeal to an international audience, but footbo has done an amazing job of making that happen. Good bye football fan Facebook app. Hello Footbo!

The "Engagement" Network

As ad networks continue to be criticized for their lack of quality, they'll need to combat this generalization in order to stay afloat. I've seen a number of ways that ad networks attempt to portray quality in the mid-long tail, but in the last couple weeks I've noticed many networks turning to "engagement" as their quality measurement. I've gotten used to hearing aspects like transparency, reach, targetability and time spent as value propositions, but engagement is new to me.

First, I think it's necessary to define engagement. Today, I read an article published in Adotas that defined engagement rather nicely: "the communication between a brand and its customer, a brand and its potential customer or between two customers. Put simply, for engagement to happen, there must be some back and forth between folks. A comment on a photo or blog post, the sharing of a widget ad, the submission of a photo or video into a contest or the emailing of a coupon to a friend are all great examples of engagement in advertising."

Through all my discussions with ad networks, I've found one in particular that truly captures the essence of engagement. Kontera, an in-text ad network, who has developed an innovative in-text technology called ContentLink that truly brings engagement into online advertising. Since Kontera received funding from Sequoia Capital in 2006, they've been able take their contextual targeting technology to the forefront of the in-text world.

Kontera's technology is unmatched by competing in-text providers. Some of the relevancy features include:

• Editorial analysis based on principles of computational linguistics in a way that mimics human intent: Which means that the technology actually reads the page and can tell the difference between Apple Computers and Apple Juice.


• Enables real-time analysis of static or dynamic content: Which means that when content on publisher pages change so will the relevant ad.


• The process is self learning and optimizing based off real time consumer behavior data analytics: Which means that the technology will recognize which keywords on what sites consumers are responding well to.

This kind of relevancy in targeting brings the consumer a level of engagement that they aren't unaccustomed to experiencing. Now a consumer can be reading about tax preparation and opt into an ad from HR Block. What's special about in-text advertising, is that the user must scroll over the underlined link in order to receive the ad. This means that readers must actually want to see the ad in order for it to be served. In addition to serving consumers contextually relevant ads, Kontera's Hybrid product will also aggregate other articles from within the publisher's site, or across the web, to give the consumer other relevant content that they might be intersted in.

This Hybrid product acts as a user and publisher benefiting engagement tool. Publishers have the opportunity to capitalize on additional revenue, increase page views, and become THE source for quality editorial content. On the other hand, consumers can now read what they want, be served additional editorial content that is relevant to what they want to read about, receive advertising that pertains to what they're engaged in and lastly, decide whether or not they want to scroll over the underlined keywords to receive all this relevant content.

The article in Adotas defines engagement as "A communication between a brand and its customer." Kontera is the facilitator of the conversation that readers wants to have with the brand. If I was a media planner buying for Iron Man (the movie), I'd want my 30 second video trailer, website, movie ticket link and theatre locator to pop up every time Robert Downy Jr.'s name shows up on popular publisher sites.

With Kontera's products and services, engagement is not an added bonus, it's their business.