A team of Yahoo veterans who built its behavioral targeting advertising technology are publicly launching a hybrid ad network today called Rocket Fuel, which they’ve tested over the past year with major brands including Nike, Dell, Microsoft, and American Express. Despite keeping quiet, Rocket Fuel’s ad network reaches 40 million people and shows them about 100 million ads per month.
CEO George John calls Rocket Fuel a “hybrid ad network” because it combines all sorts of targeting data (social, behavioral, contextual, geographical, search) to figure out what works best at any particular moment. “We saw how important it was to let the data tell you which ad to show,” says John, who came from Yahoo along with president Richard Frankel and CTO Abhinav Gupta.
Rocket Fuel’s algorithm considers everything from a consumer’s online behavior and location to the time of day and what particular ad was shown. If people who listen to electronica music are more likely to click on an ad than those who listen to jazz, or people who log in from work respond better than people from home, Rocket Fuel tries to ferret out those details and feed them back into the mechanics of the ad campaign. John explains:
We let the data tell us what works and what is important. Instead of inflicting on customers thousands of targeting options, we figure out which options are working well and move inventory in that way.
Sounds simple enough, but apparently this is not the way most ad targeting is done. Instead, advertisers and ad agencies typically are given a confusing array of targeting options and are left to their own devices to sort through them all. Rocket Fuel is automating that testing process and speeding up the feedback loop so that advertisers can hone in on whatever combination of targeting is working at that second.
But does the world really need another advertising network, hybrid or otherwise? If Rocket Fuel can deliver better advertising campaign ROIs, advertisers will give it a shot. That’s all that matters. If it can’t, it won’t make it off the launchpad.
The companyl raised $6.8 million in a series A round a year ago from Mohr Davidow, Labrador Ventures, and individual angel investors.
http://www.yafflezone.com
Keep an eye on this new multi-media search engine launching soon.Heard about it and it looks promising.
Here’s the link:http://www.yafflezone.com
Where is the spam button for comments like this one?
Keep an eye on this new multi-media search engine launching soon.Heard about it and it looks promising.
http://www.yafflezone.com
I’ll eat my shoes (all of them) if you are not or do not know the founder of that site.
[aside] They need to give their website’s markup some serious rocket fuel…
+1 – their website design is absolutely terrible. Maybe spend some of that “100 million ads” on a web designer?
I agree, that color scheme is a real shocker, what were they thinking?
Great, but we don’t get their competitive advantages.
I am wondering why you don’t understand it.
Might work, but I think it’s key to keep the ‘moving inventory’ transparant. If I was a client, I would want to know what their data is telling them, why they think so and what actions they base on it. If they don’t deliver that, it’s just magic and it keeps you out of the learning curve.
Maybe it will be fast.
Good to know Yahoo has got competition form it own chums. How far will they succeed is another story. Yahoo has its own pages to display the adds. Where will Rocket fuel people show their ads? Third party like we bloggers? Good then.
Kinda like http://branchr.com/ don’t you think? Except on a larger scale.
Don’t be so sure about scale.. they may have already sunk themselves with bad technical decisions.
They’ve certainly sunk themselves with bad hiring decisions.
I hope they make a good system. Competition is always in favor of the user…
Keep an eye on this new multi-media search engine launching soon.Heard about it and it looks promising.
It will be connected to all mobile networks worldwide(source of revenue) and partnering up with the biggest brands known to mankind,interms of revenue this will be the biggest on the net.Can’t wait to see how this turns out.See demo site below:
http://www.yaffflezone.com
Sounds like Epona’s TAPP (Trend Analysis Prediction Platform).
They should rethink the design. It doesn’t look too professional.
Wonder how it’ll stack up against the establish ad networks
Looks like they need http://www.givemeanidea.com !
All of this does not matter as long as we can’t figure out how to generate “high quality” leads. An ad that has a higher CTR or lead conversion rate is not better than other ads as long as you can’t prove it’s generating better sales or signing up more active members, …etc.
What you are saying is correct, but it’s just a matter of choosing the right metrics as target variables.
Are these the same guys that, after years of “Wait Till You This!!”, produced the big flop that was Panama? If this does work, you have to wonder why they couldn’t produce something real while Yahoo’s ability to compete with Google was riding on it.
Ad network.
Yawn.
Sort of what Dataxu is up to. There could really be a space for Advertising Artificial Intelligence if it proves to work.
Hardly a new idea, but there is a LOT of money to be made deploying it, and with more and more impressions available on ad exchanges it’s ever easier to get into the game. I expect a lot of companies to do very well with this concept or a very similar one. If they execute they’ll do really well, there’s room for a lot of successful companies in the space.
bleh… these guys are mostly hype. look at what they did in yahoo.. a me-too uncreative idea, with so-so talent. yawn.