They retrieve a “pattern of letters” which is *probably* compiled into a BIT “vector”…. More on the speculatory part:

*proximity* search within patterns + the guy is a former *computer chess* hero – which leaves me with a hunch that they have a genious algorithm inspired by pattern matching of moves on a chess board…

In any case people who spice up the business as ususal are just admirable!

Rock on

As for the targeting, we’ll have to wait and see. Most of the shopping engine syndication programs allow you to target to some extent. Look at this search on Mahalo. I searched for iphone and got product ads from Shopzilla which seem pretty targeted to me: http://www.cala...zilla/#comments

On the other side, if they want to spread around Web, the way Google did, they have to pay web publishers serious money, lots of money, before even starting to think on competing with Google AdSense. Let’s put it that way: I see no way for Proximic to reach the payout Google achieved – $3.5B paid to web publishers in the first 3 quarters of 2007…

So, taking on AdSense claims and titles are, if anything, too boostful and not serious in my view, which is more harmful to the image of the company rather than positive PR…

My 2 cents

Thank you for the coverage. Just to to clarify with regards to the deal with Shopping.com.

(1) Our relationship is with Shopping.com, not eBay, the parent company.

(2) As for the syndication with Shopping.com, the infrastructure we collaborate on is not a unique service to us. The main difference, however, is that we bring contextual relevancy to Shopping.com’s catalog data. When including Shopping.com in our mentioning to be syndicating its catalog for the first time, technically that was incorrect.

Best
Philipp

Philipp Pieper
- CEO Proximic -

This is exactly the same idea – and it’s a good idea in theory – but it’s also fairly well established that it’s not a killer contextual ad unit by any means – in short it’s not worth running in lieu of Adsense.

Nothing to see here . . .

I don’t see anywhere to sign up so I get paid…

Chitika sounded very similar back in 2005, and the hype others created around it (in terms of CTR mainly) led to lots of AdSense publishers trying it out, only to be severely disappointed with down-to-earth CTR’s and much lower effective CPC’s than they thought they’d have.

They don’t deserve coverage until it is possible to actually monetize the service, otherwise what’s the point?

Because of the fact that you are downloading a widget that will offer ads..

I don’t understand why Erick writes “first time” or “sign deal”. On another note, CPA is a source of financial loss for companies such as chitika, widgetbuck, auctionads etc…because the CPA must be transformed into CPC to pay the publishers with disproportionate ratios, to the disadvantage of these companies.

Its bullshit, and hype for nothing. 10 companies already offer the same service in CPA and in contextual mode.

I tried to signup for their widget but they appear to want me to provide them with free advertising?

Sweet.

This isn’t to say that the VSM isn’t useful or valid for this purpose (it produces fine results in many cases), but hyping technology based on it seems sort of bogus, although possibly it’s TC’s take on it making it come across that way.

The company may do fine regardless, anyway. There are plenty of advertising firms doing fine without Google’s expertise at IR concerns.

1: http://en.wikip...tor_space_model

For one, the examples page (screenshots) on how the widget works make no sense whatsoever, at least to me.