“Div” Turakhia first turned heads when at 16 he grew his business into a $300 million entity. Now 30, the brilliant “Div” has set his eyes on his subsidiary business, Media.net.
Launched in 2010, Media.net is a contextual advertising company, offering technology that pairs context with bigger factors like behavior and audience profiles that include demographics and past performance metrics. Media.net currently offers content ads, search targeting, web bar ads and mobile ads. They’re already surpassing the standard with publisher advertising by offering engagement analytics for each and by offering specialists who work with publishers to help them with integration, design creativity, performance analysis and content strategy.
Clients are also matched to advertisers to a site user’s search terms, while being able to include either search targeting alone or pairing it with ads. Media.net also offers publishers autonomy in customizing ad units and sizes. Advertisers, on the other hand, benefit from precise targeting via concepts/categories, impression-based ROI maximization, varied ad models and more.
What’s Contextual Advertising?
If you’ve noticed that ads on sites seem to replicate sites you’ve recently visited, then you’ve come face to face with contextual advertising. It’s advertising that responds to your interests and behavior patterns, proving to be more effective than traditional advertising alone. After all, wouldn’t you rather get relevant ads and wouldn’t advertisers rather invest their ad dollars based on science and strategy that connects them with the right audience…at the right time? This type of advertising also only rewards publishers/advertisers when the ad gets clicked on, rather than traditional methods of paying for just posting alone.
Should Google Be Worried?
Presently, Google dominates the contextual advertising space, and Media.net is homing in on a market that’s predicted to sky rocket. While Google may currently dominate, there is a lot of room and arguably need for some stiff competition in this arena.
Media.net gets this and is arming up, including a predicted 500 employee figure by the end of this year. While both Media.net and Google have other competition in this area, none are as well known or well-funded, making it inevitable that the two will go head-to-head.
What Can Users Expect?
Whether Google remains top dog or gets replaced by Media.net will invariably depend on who does it better and offers more innovation. Expect changes, including:
- Message customization – Advertisers will always want ads or “messages” to be as customized as possible. This of course means they need more user information, which raises a red flag for privacy rights.
- Software-free contextual advertising – As anticipated by advertisers like Federated Media, expect more middle men to offer services linking publishers with advertisers. This could bode well for smaller businesses and blogs. Perhaps we can look forward to companies willing to work for smaller, reputable and promising blogs by helping them grow while gaining a foothold in their advertising space.
- Billboard advertising – New technology is in the works to embed cameras in billboards that will scan the faces of passing drivers to determine who looks and for how long. This move highlights a shift back to traditional advertising, injecting it with a tech update.
