Wanna Date My Ad? Why Recommending Dating Partners and Pushing Ads are One in the Same

Written on April 10th 2007 Author by Joseph Matheny

So, being that my background is largely in building social applications, all the way back to the late 80s, when I hosted BBSs on my old Mac se, until now. I often see the world through the goggles of social software. In fact, in a round-about way, all my software excursions, including DVD, have always included a data gathering and customization component somewhere in the schema. That is, in fact, how I came to build a customized ad delivery platform using Flash generator and eventually ended up in my current position, CTO of a marketing technology company MediaTrust. All that to explain why I’m about to say this: technically speaking and even philosophically speaking, there is no difference between recommending a potential dating partner and ‘recommending’ a ad to an end user.

Tick-tick-tick. I can hear you thinking about that.

But you know I’m right. The same matching algorithm that I use to cross match a person to a person, I use for matching a person to an ad, or an ad to a piece of content or the triangulation of ad, user and content. The more the system knows about you and the longer an ad and content exist in the system, the longer trail of behavior exists for all said entities. Yes, content has behavior, ads have behavior. There’s cross reference and trends of other entities that access both, there’s view, responses, etc. Yes, this is a long trail of information, so a weighting system is used to attribute heavier relevance to recent activity, versus older activity.

Example: 20 something, male- buys lots of beer and sports paraphernalia, gets married (behavior changes), becomes expectant father (behavior changes), has a child (behavior changes), etc.

Of course, some behaviors will remain persistent, some will change slightly, some radically, some will disappear, and other new ones will emerge. So, the relevance window will be defined by many factors from target to product to season. As television and broadcast in general start to move towards the MPEG 4, 7 and 21 standards, this scenario maps to the near future world of teleputing (see Gilder’s Life After Television). As I said in last month’s screed, it will be the responsibility of our industry to build and keep trust, and we will only do this by delivering relevant, contextual, permission marketing and never abusing or betraying that trust.

You may have figured it out, but my ultimate goal is not to deliver bigger and better ads for bigger and better conversions. I know, I feel like I just stood up and blasphemed at mass, but it’s the truth. Better and more relevant/contextual ad delivery is a byproduct and admittedly necessary component to a media scenario I seek. That is to say, a complete, on demand, relevant, intelligent, immersive, mediascape that is responsive, realtime, and always on. Part of maintaining the ‘in game’ experience is the removal of the ‘interruption’ qualities of advertising and marketing. See my friend Dave’s book This is Not a Game for a deep dive on the ‘in game’ experience and how it relates to marketing.

Next month, I will be sending another podcast from the floor of Ad:Tech SF. Only this time I’m telling you in advance because I’d like to talk to anyone who is developing technology along these lines. I’ll interview you on camera and trade anecdotes, and give you your 15 minutes right here on ADOTAS. Also, we can talk about a new standards and practices organization I am starting up: http://www.themediatrust.org

Contact me at pod@mediatrust.com and set something up, or take your chances and hit me up as I roam the floor. I’ll be the guy with the Canon XL1S on my shoulder.

Until next month, happy networking.