Monday, July 23, 2007

MediaRiver's ClickSurge Interesting Content Monetizer

I don't know how I missed this when it launched at the end of May, but I was glad to have a conversation with a couple of the people over at MediaRiver (formerly known as Intelltext) and a one-on-one webinar that showed me the potential of this new little widget.

ClickSurge pulls content links relevant to the page content it appears on. Not ads per se but links to articles - from your site and other publishing sites thatare part of the network.

Intellext, creators of the Watson next-generation contextual search software, changed its name to MediaRiver, and released a new product for web publishers, highlighting a move into the digital media space.

ClickSurge, MediaRiver's new offering, enables Web publishers to guide Internet users to the publishers' online content in a discovery-based contextual model. ClickSurge increases page views and maximizes the reach and profitability of monetized content by contextually placing links to that content onto web pages at a publisher's website, at a partner's website or on any Internet page, including user-generated content sites such as blogs and social networks using modern widget technology.

"As the digital media landscape grows increasingly crowded, driving new visitors to Web properties and maximizing the time those users spend on those Web properties is paramount for generating revenue,"said Al Wasserberger, CEO of MediaRiver. "With ClickSurge, content publishers are able to quickly and easily connect the right audience to the right content at the right time, dramatically improving unique
user counts and page views per visit."

ClickSurge leverages MediaRiver's core contextual technology, which was originally developed in the Intelligent Information Laboratory at Northwestern University and used in the company's Watson desktop application, applying it in the case of ClickSurge to the Web. The company's patent-pending technology allows content of any type, including video, music, pictures or text, to be linked onto any web page dynamically and contextually, based on the unique properties of that web page.

When used for driving site recirculation, as it will be for new MediaRiver customers Haystack.com and RevolutionHealth.com, ClickSurge drives up the number of pages viewed during each site visit by contextually linking content throughout a ublisher's site or family of sites. Users view a publisher's related content and follow logical, sequential page views of that publisher's monetized content. As a result, the site visitor enjoys a compelling user experience and the publisher prompts monetized page views by keeping users on the site.

"People online are experiencing links to rich, relevant content. Once engaged, they are likely to click through to a publisher's various properties," said Art Chang, CEO of social network Haystack.com and founder of venture capital firm Tipping Point Partners, LLC. "ClickSurge is the ideal platform for presenting our content to new audiences, driving syndication deals and creating a compelling online experience that keeps users on Haystack.com longer."

ClickSurge serves as a key business development tool for creating and implementing traffic-driving partnerships. Regardless of how a publisher monetizes their content syndication and cross-linking partnerships, ClickSurge automatically populates their partners' Web pages with links back to monetized content.

Media companies such as new MediaRiver customers Motley Fool (www.fool.com), ClubPlanet (www.clubplanet.com) and Revolution Health will also be using ClickSurge to drive page views as a part of their viral web widget strategies.

"When Motley Fool discovered ClickSurge, we recognized its potential to virally distribute our content to investors all over the Internet while increasing traffic to our monetized content," said John Keeling, SVP of Fool.com. "With ClickSurge, we look to multiply page views throughout our network of sites. The platform will be a key way to expand our online audience."

There is no upfront cost for a web publisher to get started with ClickSurge. Instead, the publisher pays only a percentage of the new revenue realized from new traffic to their web properties.

No comments:

Post a Comment