The Companies That Interest iMedia Agency Summit Attendees – Part One of Four (A through C)

Thanks to iMediaConnection for publishing this first.

One of the new traditions of the Agency Only Day at iMedia Summit is to survey attendees about the things that most intrigue them for the months ahead. This year, we surveyed the agency leaders asking the following question:

We'd like to get the group sharing about the innovations they have found/are impressed with. Are there specific new companies/offerings you find particularly intriguing at the moment and are seriously considering for use in 2011?

In total, the group identified 21 companies they found noteworthy. The key themes seem to be analytics, automation, and simplification, which makes a lot of sense in our increasingly fragmented environment.

Because several of the companies were new to me, and on the principle that there may be others in the iMedia Connection audience who could not attend the event but still might find these companies interesting, I put together the following summary. Before anyone contacts me wondering why their company wasn’t on the list: If your company is on the list, its’ because you were listed in at least one survey response. If you aren’t, it’s because no one listed you in their survey response.

AdKeeper: is a virtual clipping service that enables consumers to clip ads that interest them for later review. AdKeeper overlays a “keep button” on every ad you see as you browse the web. If you are interested in the info, or video, or offer in an ad, you simply click the keep button and it is placed in your AdKeeper. Yu can later review these offers, send them to friend, and print them. Here’s the explanatory video:



Better Advertising is a privacy and choice platform for media delivered through advanced targeting. It gives businesses an easy, standard method to provide evidence of compliance with industry guidelines and provide consumers with more transparency into, and control over the interest-based advertising (another term for BT) they receive. By empowering consumers and earning their trust, businesses build their brands, participate in BT with confidence and generate better advertising results.

Clear Saleing is a marketing optimization engine that helps agencies and marketers measure the success and impact of various digital marketing efforts, and optimize the mix based upon profitability. Best suited to online purchases, the offering tracks profitability across media, ensures the impact of various media are accurately attributed, and helps optimize digital plans with a portfolio perspective. Get the sponsored Forrester report on the profit impact of Clear Saleing here.

Many of us are already familiar with Clear Spring as they have been around for a while. Their message for advertisers today is as an “Audience Platform” that enables advertisers to reach the right users at the times they are ready to act. They focus on two kinds of audience aggregation: intent-based segments at various points in the purchase cycle, and influence segments composed of people likely to share messages to social media. These super sharers help brands generate a greater virality in social media. Clearspring segments/data are available through the leading demand side platforms. The basis of their data collection and segmentation is gathered from their “Add This” button network that makes content sharing easier. By collecting data at the point of share, Clearspring gets a strong picture of people’s interests, intents, and passions.

Clovr Media is a consumer service that lets consumers send offers directly to their credit or loyalty cards. These Card Linked Offers (CLOs) replace coupons, digital coupons, and other tangible discount media. They also make the results of online promotional activity trackable with 100% attribution. There are consumer advantages, of course, but also tremendous advantages for manufacturers and retailers. The process of manually dealing with printed coupon redemption is one that resembles the children’s game Mousetrap, so having it all occur digitally is a boon for all. Here’s the vid that explains it all.



ChaCha is a mobile answers service that lets consumers ask questions from a variety of locations (mobile, iPad, PC) and receive answers quickly from human guides. Advertisements support the service and are delivered in text messages, as graphical phone ads, as sponsored online results, and as in app ads. A sponsored frost and Sullivan white paper on how brands can work with ChaCha is available from this page.

Baby U Wanna Go Private?

I thought I'd use a come-on headline simulating the start of a steamy private chat session to catch your attention. Sorry, I know it's a dirty deception. No pun intended. But I did it because I'm on a personal mission to get our industry to care about privacy and to embrace the Cross Industry Coalition's Power i program. At ad:tech SF I jumped up and down on a stage saying "You have to care about this." That's how important I think it is.

Yes, privacy. You hate talking and reading about it. Five will get you ten that you've already stopped reading and found some link on this page to click on to get away from the p word. For ten years our industry has been more or less dodging this issue because it's complicated and makes everyone feel a little dirty.

But the FTC is demanding that we care, especially (but not exclusively) as regards BT. They're doing this in part because about 2/3 of consumers say that a perceived lack of online privacy troubles them.

Here's the ultimatum: care or risk BT and other forms of targeting getting heavily regulated. Or maybe shut down.

BTW, a BT shutdown would decimate more than a few pubs that depend on higher CPMS from BT inventory to keep the lights on. It would also kill off one of the biggest growth engines of digital spending. DR would suffer big time. And branding too, because finding in-market eyeballs for brand messages is pretty darned important in some of our biggest categories.

Our industry gets it. The CBBB, IAB, AAAAs, DMA, and ANA have gotten together to develop the Power i program that notifies consumers when BT is used to deliver an ad to them, gives them information about BT, and gives them choice.

You put a small Power i on your BT ads. And the consumer has the option to click on it and find out about the data and companies used to put the ad in front of her. She can read it, and do nothing. Or click again and read more. Or she can opt out of some or all targeting.

You as a BT advertiser use the i to extend the same level of trust to the consumer that she extends to you when she buys your brand.

By using the Power i, you are saying to her, 'I respect you. I know that your data and interests are yours, not mine. I ask that you allow me to use anonymous information to find you and put things in front of you that you'll probably be interested in. I won't force you to let me do this. Because I value our relationship.'

A CSF client makes this discovery and choice process easy and clear and decidedly unscary. Called Better Advertising (AdAge's analysis here,) it makes the post click experience easy, straightforward and clear. Their technology is also vigilant in ensuring that her wishes are respected. BA even makes sure that your brand gets the credit for this transparency and choice.

I'll take bets that the people who click on the i will like you more for being straight up with them. And that very few people will actually opt out.

Now, there's no law that says you have to use Power i-s. You can trust her and demonstrate your concern for her wishes. Or you can do nothing and give her a reason to question your methods and fundamentally your regard for her dignity as a free person.

Personally, I prefer to do business with people and institutions that treat me with dignity. How about you?