Posts by Twelvefold Media

Today marks a significant step forward for BuzzLogic as we announce Spectrum, the first platform of its kind that helps brands connect emotionally with consumers at the page level and across the visible web– all in real time by finding the most relevant content for the brand and campaign. The news release can be read here.

For us relevance means finding the most influential and authentic content and understanding the emotional mindset that content creates. All content creates some emotional connection with its audience. We can help brands capture that emotion and drive their brand and campaign goals.

What’s different about Spectrum? First and foremost, we’re now able to understand content at the page level as opposed to the site or domain. Knowing why particular content is relevant and influential to a brand’s objectives means we can more effectively unlock the emotional connection between content and its intended audience.

Essentially, Spectrum scores pages and decide which ones accomplish the brand’s goals for ad placement. On top of this is new real-time bidding and at an immense scale, plus continuous analysis throughout the media campaign to align an advertiser’s message with what’s most relevant and authentic. This is all achieved without tracking cookies.

We’re confident that Spectrum represents a new direction for our industry and achieving our client’s goals, namely, the right ad at the right place at the right time. I invite you to take a peek under the hood to see for yourself.

BuzzLogic, an online media company that uses emotive-based ad targeting to connect advertisers with highly targeted, highly engaged audiences, has announced Spectrum, an Online Advertising Platform For Page-Level, Real-Time Delivery of Emotive-Based Ads.

• Emotive-based targeting based on a deep understanding of a page’s content and its effect on audience

• Spectrum places relevant ads at the page-level in real-time, and at immense scale

• Technology platform finds and ranks page-level content based on relevance and influence; also determines if content on the page is authentic, and not just a set of keywords

San Francisco, Calif. (October 17, 2011)—BuzzLogic announced today that it has launched an innovative online advertising platform called Spectrum, centered upon emotive-based advertising. Spectrum identifies and understands the influence of content at a page level—versus the site or category level—and executes real-time bids and ad placements based on content that’s highly relevant to a brand’s campaign goals.

Using emotive-based ad targeting, BuzzLogic connects advertisers with highly targeted, highly engaged audiences. The company can help a brand develop an emotional connection with consumers via custom ads seeded amongst the most authoritative and influential content on the Web. This is sourced real-time and without the use of cookies. Emotive-based targeting captures the emotional connection an audience has with specific page content.

“What keeps a brand manager awake at night is not how to raise click-through rates or how to get more impressions – it’s how to make an emotional connection with their consumer,” said Dave Hills, CEO of BuzzLogic. “With Spectrum, we have the ability to help a brand target, reach and persuade an engaged audience through understanding the emotional mindset that content creates with its audience. An appropriately placed and well-timed ad can evoke the same emotion as the content on the page. This creates a more powerful connection to the brand which results in greater purchase intent.”

Spectrum boasts the ability to uncover and understand page-level content (versus the typical site or domain level data). In milliseconds, the content on thousands of pages can be scored based on its relevance related to a brand’s campaign goals. The system then dynamically bids upon the most influential URLs at scale—be it hundreds or millions of URLs.

Given no two brand’s have the same campaign goals, advertising schedules and execution are also unique. For example, two competing Japanese car brands may be running campaigns at the same time and have different marketing objectives. In this instance, pages that were categorically common to both campaigns would have different values and scores allowing each brand to reach consumers in a specific mindset that meets their independant goals.

Just as no one page of content has absolute value, one ad does not fit all. Once content is identified as a good fit for the brand’s message, Spectrum builds the optimal ad for the environment. This customization is as important as finding the right audience and pages, since the brand’s customized ad unit(s) draws engagement and connection with the consumer.

Further, as bids are won and ads placed, Spectrum indexes all pages in real time. The intelligence gathered overtime improves performance of the system as a whole.

• Emotive-based targeting based on a deep understanding of a page’s content and its effect on audience
• Spectrum places relevant ads at the page-level in real-time, and at immense scale
• Technology platform finds and ranks page-level content based on relevance and influence; also determines if content on the page is authentic, and not just a set of keywords

SAN FRANCISCO, (Oct 17, 2011) – BuzzLogic announced today that it has launched an innovative online advertising platform called Spectrum, centered upon emotive-based advertising. Spectrum identifies and understands the influence of content at a page level–versus the site or category level–and executes real-time bids and ad placements based on content that’s highly relevant to a brand’s campaign goals.

Using emotive-based ad targeting, BuzzLogic connects advertisers with highly targeted, highly engaged audiences. The company can help a brand develop an emotional connection with consumers via custom ads seeded amongst the most authoritative and influential content on the Web. This is sourced real-time and without the use of cookies. Emotive-based targeting captures the emotional connection an audience has with specific page content.

“What keeps a brand manager awake at night is not how to raise click-through rates or how to get more impressions — it’s how to make an emotional connection with their consumer,” said Dave Hills, CEO of BuzzLogic. “With Spectrum, we have the ability to help a brand target, reach and persuade an engaged audience through understanding the emotional mindset that content creates with its audience. An appropriately placed and well-timed ad can evoke the same emotion as the content on the page. This creates a more powerful connection to the brand which results in greater purchase intent.”

Spectrum boasts the ability to uncover and understand page-level content (versus the typical site or domain level data). In milliseconds, the content on thousands of pages can be scored based on its relevance related to a brand’s campaign goals. The system then dynamically bids upon the most influential URLs at scale–be it hundreds or millions of URLs.

Given no two brands have the same campaign goals, advertising schedules and execution are also unique. For example, two competing Japanese car brands may be running campaigns at the same time and have different marketing objectives. In this instance, pages that were categorically common to both campaigns would have different values and scores allowing each brand to reach consumers in a specific mindset that meets their independent goals.

Just as no one page of content has absolute value, one ad does not fit all. Once content is identified as a good fit for the brand’s message, Spectrum builds the optimal ad for the environment. This customization is as important as finding the right audience and pages, since the brand’s customized ad unit(s) draws engagement and connection with the consumer.

Further, as bids are won and ads placed, Spectrum indexes all pages in real time. The intelligence gathered overtime improves performance of the system as a whole.

About BuzzLogic

BuzzLogic is the only emotive-based media company that helps brands target, reach and persuade engaged audiences by delivering the right ad, in the right place at the right time to the most motivated customers in the right mindset. BuzzLogic creates customized digital media packages with proprietary technology that utilizes emotive-based targeting at the page level and real-time bidding–at scale and without cookies–to achieve superior results and insights for brands and advertisers.

BuzzLogic’s clientele includes Kraft, Toyota, Best Buy, Microsoft, and Starbucks.

BuzzLogic is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. For more information, visit: http://www.buzzlogic.com , or follow at Twitter.com/BuzzLogic.

Much has been written recently on tracking cookies, particularly if they’re good or bad. We think that misses the real point, which is if they’re effective or not.

Personally we’re not opposed to cookies but they do have drawbacks. One of their biggest is an inability to identify the influence and authority of content, as well as the emotional connection it makes with target audiences.

Our technology never has and never will employ the use of cookies. Instead, we create and own our data, and constantly index and rank page context and content to identify the most pervasive opportunities for advertisers. Superior understanding of data enables us to place the right ad in the right place and at the right time — all without having to open the cookie jar.

by Peter O’Sullivan

In our final installment about deconstructing BuzzLogic we look at the role reporting plays both within a campaign, as well as with overall brand management (If you’re just joining us, be sure to check out Steps 1 – 3 on Campaign Planning, Building a Media Plan, and Monitoring and Optimization).

One certainty about the Internet age is that we’re swimming with data, yet our industry often relies on one metric – “the click” – to measure the success of online ad campaigns. This approach looks at a small piece of the puzzle but misses out on gaining true strategic insight; understanding if products are (or are not) resonating with consumer and fulfilling their brand promise is what keeps marketing managers up at night!

When it comes to effective campaign management and measurement, brands and agencies want actionable intelligence: What’s the key take-away? What trend does this point to? How does this info impact my future media spend? These are important questions to ask. And answer.

BuzzLogic is built on strong technology, proprietary data, advanced targeting capability combined with human analysis to offer advanced reporting and insights that make a difference for our customers. Our reporting evaluates a massive index of content with powerful analytics that enable us to view and interpret huge amounts of data specific to the brand, product, category, competition, and even consumer mindset.

These “State of the Brand Reports” offer brands unique insights not available from another source. We measure beyond numbers and look at key qualitative aspects such as creating long-term preference for your product; if the product is living up to the brand promise; building brand equity over time, and whether the brand’s unique selling proposition is resonating with consumers (or is it being drowned out by the competition).

For example, Toyota has dominant share of the hybrid car market, yet offerings from Honda, Nissan, Chevy and Ford are competing for mindshare. Our analytics can detail how Toyota’s selling proposition is fairing against this new competition; features most important to the hybrid car buyer; what separates a hybrid buyer from a gasoline powered car, and if Toyota’s mindshare in the hybrid car category is rising or falling, and why. These insights not only gauge if a campaign is on track, but in a broader sense, the brand’s overall positioning within the marketplace.

To summarize, reporting is a critical element of BuzzLogic’s technology because we enable clients to look beyond “the click” and gain insight to the meaning their product & brand holds in the consumer mindset. Not only does this contribute to creating more successful future campaigns but also better overall brand positioning.

by Seph Zdarko

In Step 2 of deconstructing BuzzLogic we talked about measuring organic, authentic and relevant content, in this post we discuss how we monitor and optimize within those content environments.

Online content is a viral, social and living organism that is ever changing and evolving. Even before we launch the first ad on a campaign we start the monitoring and optimization process. Every day new links and connections between content are being created and it is our job to discover, analyze and take advantage of those developing changes in ways that will positively affect the outcomes of an advertisers brand message to its chosen audience and content targets. For this reason our index is refreshed every 24 hours so we can stay on top of, and maximize, the brand advertiser’s goals.

Campaign Monitoring:

When most people think of monitoring online display campaigns they think of all the new ad verification companies that have popped up in the last year. In a typical network or exchange environment these verification measures can be necessary, especially with cookie based or behavioral targeting. However, at BuzzLogic there is no need for additional verification because our visibility into the page has already been established. If we can’t see the page, we can’t see the content, and if we can’t see the content, we won’t serve a single ad on the site. We have always been, and always will be, 100% transparent. Transparency is a requirement for us to find and analyze the content on a page and this means we only serve ads in well lit places that are brand safe.

Monitoring a campaign from our perspective is about ensuring that ads are being served in the most relevant and authentic places at all times, and this feeds directly into our optimization process.

Campaign Optimization:

Most online optimization techniques today revolve around cookies and user based algorithms to rotate ads and creative elements to achieve results, but this approach is very limited as it focuses on less than 1% of the activity, and it is all after the ad is served. We’re different because we look at the activity before the ad is served by first using page level analysis to determine the content density that best fits a specific advertiser’s targets and goals. We optimize for authentic content first and we have found that if we do that part well, the clicks and conversions follow. We start optimizing before launch, during the launch and throughout the campaign to its completion. Everything we do is custom to order and the final result can sometimes be surprisingly different by the end of a campaign than when we first start depending on the nature of the content being targeted. For example, in a recent campaign targeting a particular beverage item, we found that it wasn’t the beverage discussion that was driving results, but rather an emotional state of mind that it was creating while consuming it. This realization early on in the campaign allowed us to shift the media buy over to these new content targets mid campaign and it resulted in us being one of the strongest partners on the advertiser’s plan. Not only did our ongoing optimizations work for us, but the advertiser used our information to shift other parts of its advertising budget to focus on these areas as well.

We continually find that the state on mind that a consumer is in, at that moment of ad delivery, greatly affects their receptivity to the advertiser’s message. We leverage this truism to create massive scale across the digital media ecosystem. It is pretty simple when you think about it, if a particular product makes you feel an emotion (warm and cozy, for example), then targeting other areas or activities that also make you feel that way is a great place to advertise that product. You just can’t do that with cookie based or behavioral targeting and that is why BuzzLogic puts so much emphasis on our analysis of content first.

For the most part our results speak for themselves, but it is because of our diligent and ongoing focus on monitoring and optimization that achieve our stellar results. In our next blog post, we will share with you our reporting and post campaign insights that truly create a full service package for both agencies and brands.

BuzzLogic, an online media company that improves brand metrics and ROI through its scalable media index and analytics platform, has announced R. Brian Gibson as their new Chief Financial Officer.

San Francisco, Calif. (August 30, 2011)—BuzzLogic, an online media company that improves brand metrics and ROI through its scalable media index and analytics platform, has appointed media and online advertising veteran R. Brian Gibson, C.A., as Chief Financial Officer.

Gibson has more than has more than 20 years of financial experience, most recently as Vice President of Finance and Principal Accounting Officer of LooksSmart, Ltd. Gibson also served as Vice President of Finance for Sensage, Inc, and has held a number of other executive positions.

“Brian’s skill set and knowledge of the industry is critical to our growth in the future,” said Dave Hills, BuzzLogic’s CEO. “The addition of Brian completes the executive team that I believe is one of the best in the industry.”

Gibson joins at a pivotal time for the company, as the recently revamped executive team drives forward an online advertising business model that has netted increased revenues at a rate greater than 50% per quarter in 2011. BuzzLogic also closed $7.8 million Series C funding earlier this year.

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About BuzzLogic

BuzzLogic provides advertisers and agencies an all-in-one, social and media solution with targeting, optimizing and reporting at huge scale. Its technology has indexed and ranked more than 1.5 billion pieces of distinct content and utilizes analytics to not only recognize topic, but also the media around it, hence identifying the most persuasive opportunities for advertisers. Utilizing this data, BuzzLogic creates customized digital media packages, and generates robust reporting to measure ROI. BuzzLogic’s clientele includes Proctor & Gamble, Toyota, Best Buy, PlayStation, Microsoft, and Starbucks.

BuzzLogic is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

For more information, visit us at www.buzzlogic.com, or follow us on Twitter.

by Julia Briggs Parsons

Another common question from clients and prospects is: How does BuzzLogic buy the media for each plan?

The first thing to note here is how we don’t buy. We’re not a network, and approach each plan by first analyzing the most valuable content across the web for a brand to place their ads. With a network agnostic approach we act upon the brand’s goals to own as many impressions as possible within a content target to increase their share of voice. We couple this with great direct relationships to launch a plan against only the sites that fit a brand’s campaign content target(s).

The second thing to know about how we buy is that we don’t just look at what content is on the page like a traditional contextual play. Instead we look at the content through a lens of authenticity and influence for insight into the environment where the ads will be placed.

Then comes our third layer, which is understanding the mindset of the reader. We surface from the content what the meaning of the page is to the person actively reading it (reading an article on healthy snacks and childhood obesity puts the reader in a very different mindset than reading about healthy snacks for a family outing). For brands, this means we help them understand what the meaning of the content around their ad is, but what the consumer is thinking when exposed to their ad. This is powerful when coupled with messaging and creative.

Our technology allows us to do all of the above with ease, making it easy for us to provide our advertisers with the right ad, in the right place, at the right time.

by Julia Briggs Parsons

Q: How is BuzzLogic different than advertisers who leverage NLP technology?

The goal of Natural Language Processing is to look at a set of text and categorize its general meaning. NLP will say this page is worth A, B, C and D, and is always worth A, B, C, and D.

We don’t have a stance against NLP. But we do believe value changes based on other components of the page that can be stripped out during the NLP process, and that when you’re categorizing anything there is a dilution of value to the advertiser’s specific and unique goals. All parts of content have value, the site that content lives on has value, and certain words that mean everything to a brand may be irrelevant to others. Understanding these discrete differences is what makes our solution different.

At BuzzLogic, we look at the advertiser’s goals FIRST. We create a custom query to identify how individual pages rank in influence, relevance and meaning in relation to the brand’s specific goals. This flexibility is key. We evaluate and match pages to the goal, rather than matching advertisers to a static value given to a page. If a brand’s competitor came to us with their own specific and unique goals it would drive a different and unique query, and the value of a page is likely to be something different.

What we do is very difficult for our competitors to do. We’ve made it easy with technology, and therefore easy for our customers to activate against their own specific and unique marketing goals.

BuzzLogic, an online media company that improves brand metrics and ROI through its scalable media index and analytics platform, has appointed media and online advertising veteran Peter C. Horan to its board of directors.

San Francisco, California (June 1, 2011) – BuzzLogic, an online media company that improves brand metrics and ROI through its scalable media index and analytics platform, has appointed media and online advertising veteran Peter C. Horan to its board of directors.

Horan has more than 30 years of media experience, and is currently the Executive Chairman of Halogen Media Group. He has formerly served CEO of several online media companies, including About.com, AllBusiness.com, and IAC Search and Media. At IAC, he led businesses that included Ask.com, CitySearch, eVite, Consumer Applications, and the Advertising Solutions group at IAC’s Media and Advertising group.

“Peter is extremely knowledgeable and highly regarded in our industry and I’m thrilled to work with him again,” said Dave Hills, BuzzLogic’s CEO. “As BuzzLogic moves to grow and dominate improving brand metrics and ROI at huge scale using our index and analytics, it’s critical to build the right team at all levels. Having Peter on our Board gives us a great team to guide the company today and in the future.”

“I’m looking forward to working with Dave and the entire team at BuzzLogic,” said Peter Horan. “I’ve been totally blown away by their technology, growth rate, and skill set. Their business approach is highly relevant to today’s online advertising environment where engaging is key. They’re a company to watch.”

Horan has a proven track record of building successful media and Internet businesses, being part of four profitable company exits in the last seven years totaling nearly $700 million.

Peter is also an active angel investor and board member, working with Lending Tree, Function (x), Merchant Circle, Nile Guide, Apture, Avid Trips, AdZerk, Mahalo, PublishThis, and Bright Hub.

BuzzLogic recently closed $7.8 million Series C funding. Formerly known as an online monitoring company, BuzzLogic has undergone a complete transformation to now provide advertisers and agencies an all-in-one, social and conversational media solution with targeting, optimizing and reporting at huge scale. Its technology has indexed and ranked more than 1.5 billion pieces of distinct content and utilizes analytics to not only recognize topic, but also the conversational media around it, hence identifying the most persuasive opportunities for advertisers. Utilizing this data, BuzzLogic creates customized digital media packages, and generates robust reporting to measure ROI.

By placing relevant ads designed to motivate engagement with consumers on sites targeted by BuzzLogic, national brands are developing relationships with consumers and achieving impressive engagement metrics, an ability that social media monitoring companies lack because they don’t have the combination of understanding, media activation and scale. Advertisers can even syndicate their Twitter or Facebook content within the ad itself through the BuzzRoll ad unit the company creates, ensuring there’s extensive engagement with the brand’s social content. These unique features, highly appealing to brands, help account for BuzzLogic’s fast growth.

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About BuzzLogic
Formerly known as an online monitoring company, BuzzLogic has undergone a complete transformation to now provide advertisers and agencies an all-in-one, social and conversational media solution with targeting, optimizing and reporting at huge scale. Its technology has indexed and ranked more than 1.5 billion pieces of distinct content and utilizes analytics to not only recognize topic, but also the conversational media around it, hence identifying the most persuasive opportunities for advertisers. Utilizing this data, BuzzLogic creates customized digital media packages, and generates robust reporting to measure ROI. BuzzLogic’s clientele includes Proctor & Gamble, Toyota, Best Buy, PlayStation, Microsoft, and Starbucks.

BuzzLogic is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. For more information, visit: http://www.buzzlogic.com, Facebook.com/BuzzLogic or follow at Twitter.com/BuzzLogic.