AlmondNet and Lycos Team For Serving Post-Search Advertising
When I first heard about AlmondNet I thought to myself, now that’s the ticket! Coming from an online media buying background and now working predominately with paid search, AlmondNet’s post-search targeting seems to be the perfect middle ground. AlmondNet serves contextually targeted advertising across tradtional banner ad network channels which targets terms a web user searches on after they do a search. Easy example – if you search for “bank checks” on a search engine Monday at 3 pm, and then while surfing the web from that same computer, AlmondNet may serve you a targeted banner ad for “Looking to renew your bank checks? Find over 500 designs at 4checks.com” while you’re checking your fantasy baseball stats or shopping for a new sofa.
Call it behavioral targeting, call it post search advertising, call it whatever, but what it does is opens the door to targeting advertisements to users who you know are interested in purchasing specific products, and reaching them on sites which are not search powered. “Forty percent of online advertising spending goes to search engines, but people spend less than 5 percent of their time on search engines,” says Roy Shkedi, CEO of AlmondNet, Inc.
AlmondNet struck a deal with Lycos today to serve Lycos search targeted advertising across AlmondNets’s ad network partners. AdWeek reports: Lycos said it would distribute listings from its advertisers through AlmondNet’s new ad network that shows ads to users based on their search history… AlmondNet plans to distribute Lycos’ Adbuyer paid listings in banner ads, targeting them based on users’ previous search behavior. AlmondNet has struck deals with undisclosed ISPs and adware companies to collect non-personally identifiable search behavior through cookies. The search data is then used by AlmondNet’s Post-Search broker network, which buys low-priced run-of-site inventory from publishers, to display graphical ads tied to previous search behavior.
AlmondNet has numerous paid search partners, but Lycos is the largest branded name to date. AlmondNet, which holds the patent on post-search behavioral advertising, explains that post-search provides consumers with a value added service by presenting them with ads targeted to their particular interests wherever they are. Privacy advocates freaked out yet? Here’s an explanation from Mr Shkedi: “Because of the importance and value that AlmondNet attaches to consumer privacy, our solution gathers no personally-identifiable information and is based on anonymous cookies. No additional information is gained by any of the parties involved- not by the advertiser delivering the ad, not by the site where the consumer conducts the search, and not by the site the consumer visits after the conduct of their search. AlmondNet itself can only serve a Post-Search ad if it encounters a consumer that conducted a search during the subsequent 30 day period.”
