Through a unique partnership with Japan’s DAC, Revenue Science brings behavioral targeting to Japan.
Recently, eBay's comparison shopping site, Shopping.com, entered into a partnership with Revenue Science, a behavioral targeting company, to start displaying behaviorally targeted ads to visitors based on their search activity on the site and the pages they visit. The partnership will enable Shopping.com to deliver more relevant advertising through behavioral targeting to audiences on Shopping.com as well as on its premier consumer reviews site Epinions.
With the proliferation of ecommerce, incorporating behavioral targeting to consumers’ access to product and pricing information has become increasingly important for advertisers. As an example, “The wealth of behavior that Shopping.com can draw on to enable behaviorally targeted campaigns from its two sites will be incredibly attractive to advertisers who want to reach consumers throughout the sales cycle,” says Nick Johnson, senior vice president of business development and general manager of account strategy for Revenue Science.
Already have domestic partnerships with such companies as Shopping.com, Wall Street Journal, ESPN.com, Univision.com and Dennis Digital, (the interactive division for Maxim, STUFF, Blender and The Week magazines), it was only a matter of time for New York based Revenue Science to expand internationally.
Last month, Revenue Science announced its presence in the UK and Europe with the addition of such blue-chip clients as FT.com, The Guardian, Associated New Media, News International, Reuters and Wanadoo.
According to Johnson: “The U.K. has shown the most demand as we have been selling there for a little over a year now and are working with major publishers. We just opened an office and hired a managing director to handle the volume of campaigns. However, we expect that the Japanese market will reach U.K. levels very quickly as the market is quick to embrace and maximize the value of new technologies like behavioral targeting.”
Revenue Science introduces behavioral targeting in Japan
With the rapid growth of online users in countries such as China (by the end of this year alone we will have seen the online population in China go from 70 million to 100 million) and Japan (the percentage of households in Japan using broadband is set to grow to over 70 percent by 2007 according to eMarketer), coupled with top U.S. internet companies like Google and Yahoo! expanding their international operations, companies such as Revenue Science must start viewing globalization as a necessity rather than a sideline.
Revenue Science entered into a strategic partner agreement with DAC, Japan’s leading online advertising company, to introduce behavioral targeting in Japan. Says Johnson, “We are excited about the partnership and the opportunity it presents in the second largest internet market in the world. We are aggressive in the market. Within a month of the partner agreement, we were able to sign up multiple publishers in the DAC Ad-Network to use BT.”
The below initial Revenue Science/DAC partnership publishers represent about 90 million page views per month and will expand to include more publishers and page views of 400 million in Q1:
A cosmetic community site that is Japans #1 largest site
A parenting/mothers' site
A car site
A golf-related site
Two of Japan's largest TV stations
One of the biggest publishers of female lifestyle magazines.
“Our partnership with DAC is a major signal to the media world that behavioral targeting is a marketing tool for everyone-- not just English language or U.S. marketers. It continues to prove what we’ve been saying all along-- that behavioral targeting applies to any publisher and any market,” says Johnson.
As always, U.S.-based companies involved with foreign operations experience localization and usability challenges. As an example, Johnson says:
“Our behavioral targeting goes far beyond the 'section level' where most behavioral targeting stops. Revenue Science technology is effective because it looks at every word on a page, regardless of the section, and we had to make sure that was understood and valued correctly. Then, we have to translate our technology to work with 'double-byte' characters such as the Kanji alphabet.”
According to a recent survey by iMedia/Ponemen, 64 percent of all U.S. ad agencies are buying behavioral targeting with an average 13 percent share of budget going towards the strategy. They forecast an increase to 21 percent share of budget for 2006. Behavioral targeting is rapidly growing and it is clear that this technology is going to include inventory management systems and an increased emphasis on sales strategy in the near future. Planners and buyers will need to seek out new online opportunities where they can identify their targets and build robust campaigns to meet their objectives. The promise of behavioral targeting has become a reality and is poised to become a standard part of the global media mix.