May
 2004

Vibrant Media
415.901.0125
vibrantmedia.com

Watching the evolution of Web site ad formats over the last 10 years has been a lot like watching an “X-Men” movie: You can always count on mutation.

Ads started with banners, then transformed to larger formats thanks to sites like CNET and The New York Times.com

That was followed by the now-ubiquitous pop-over and pop-under ads, as well as those contextually derived text links from search engine Google.

Into this complex mix enters San Francisco-based Vibrant Media Inc., which in April launched a new advertising technology called IntelliTXT.

In a nutshell, IntelliTXT does for editorial content what Google does for AdWords. Instead of relevant ads popping up in response to a specific search, however, IntelliTXT pops up ads associated with selected words contained in articles, said Doug Stevenson, Vibrant’s co-founder and chief executive officer.

Vibrant Media Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder Doug Stevenson. Photo: Vibrant Media

IntelliTXT attaches double-underlined hyperlinks to words that companies want to match their ad messages.




Vibrant Media’s tool tips display as double-underlined marks under textually relevant keywords. When a user mouses over a specific word, advertising detail will appear in a pop-up box.
Graphic: Vibrant Media

Once a user positions his cursor over an IntelliTXT hyperlink for more than a split-second, a JavaScript-driven text box appears over the word. The box, dubbed a tool tip, provides contextually relevant advertising information, including a link to the advertiser’s URL.

Need for format

“After the market for online advertising cratered, I really saw the need for a new format that would address the concerns of relevancy that many advertisers were having,” Stevenson said.

Stevenson founded Vibrant along with Craig Gooding, each former e-commerce executives at AOL Europe.

“I also saw the success that ad networks like 24/7 Real Media and Tribal Fusion were having and I wanted something that could be used in that kind of networked environment,” Stevenson said.

Technologically, the company claims that IntelliTXT is easy to implement and does not require the investment in hardware or software that scares off publishers from investing in new ad-delivery formats. That’s because Vibrant hosts the software at its data center, eliminating the need for users to run the software on-site.

Vibrant offers IntelliTXT free of charge to Web publishers but shares revenues based on a number of factors that include the amount of traffic a site attracts. Advertisers pay Vibrant a fluctuating fee - determined by a bidding process - for each click-through.

The message travels

When a user’s browser requests a page with Vibrant Media code contained within, it also sends a message to Vibrant’s servers, which in turn instantly parse the textual content of the page (the “story”) and check that content against a database of advertiser-sponsored keywords.

Keywords are matched using a dedicated algorithm that uses surrounding content for matching to improve accuracy. If a match is found, the double-underlined links are inserted into the story dynamically where the user’s browser processes them.

Vibrant doesn’t interfere with the performance of the publisher’s server; the publisher still transmits requested pages buttressed with the keywords and associated ad text from Vibrant.

A user with a high-speed connection will see tool tips appearing almost instantaneously with page loading, Stevenson said.

Vibrant’s technology was engineered for so-called “graceful degradation,” said Stevenson. If Vibrant’s servers are  unavailable for any reason, requested pages won’t be delayed and advertising links simply won’t appear.

For now, IntelliTXT only works with IE 5.0 and higher. Users with other browsers won’t see any of the tool tips, Stevenson said, adding that Vibrant consciously targeted IE in order to develop a technology that will work perfectly with the industry’s most popular browser app.

Thus far, Vibrant Media has agreements in place with a number of Web publishers, including IGN, the largest Internet site for electronic gaming information, Popular Mechanics and The Auto Channel. Current advertisers include Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and IBM.