New Platform Marries Virtual Currency to Behavioral Targeting

Adknowledge, the behavioral targeting ad network that last year purchased virtual currency vendor Super Rewards, is launching a platform that will integrate currency offers with banner ads and direct payments, and use consumer behavior to determine which of the three to deliver and when.

“One of the things we’ve noticed is that a lot of ad networks plan to approach monetization by simply showing consumers more ads,” said Scott Lynn. CEO of Adknowledge. “This is really the first product in the virtual currency space that’s tailoring the advertising units themselves to online consumers.”

Given the respective strengths of Adknowledge and Super Rewards (predictive technology and virtual currency, respectively), the current solution may have seemed inevitable: Use predictive technology to deliver the appropriate form of virtual currency offer to each consumer.

“If we know that a consumer is frequently signing up to receive points with a credit card, then we can choose not to show that consumer banner advertising or promote an offer wall,” he said. An offer wall is a listing of different offers a person can select from in exchange for currency in an online game or virtual world. Farmville’s offer wall contains icons from Netflix and Best Buy, among others.

“Conversely, if we see the consumer clicking on banner advertisements a lot but not signing for offers, then we know to only show them banner ads and not show them offers.”

The system works by placing a cookie on the consumer’s computer that remembers which ad units he or she interacted with.

The new platform launches on Monday, but Lynn said Adknowledge had already run tests to determine its efficacy. Those tests showed an increase in yield from 15 to 80 percent. Scott blamed the wide range of results on the fact that not all publishers were offering all three types of unit.