Online Partners Launches Marketing Test Site

San Francisco-based Online Partners launched eCommunity, a program “that allows advertisers to target, test, refine and deliver advertising and promotions by directly engaging in online dialogs with the communities they target.”

eCommunity uses interactive tools that help build and reinforce online communities, such as chat, email and message boards, throughout a Web site to create multiple opportunities for buyer-seller dialog, the company said. Using information derived from these exchanges, advertisers can create online and offline advertising and promotions that more effectively target their audience.

The eCommunity program works with any community, from affinity groups to vertical business markets, the company said. It leverages number of visitors, which establishes the size of a consumer sample over time; number of concurrent online users, which sets the number of consumers available for advertiser interaction at any one time; and time spent online, which provides guidelines for how long the consumer may be willing to be engaged.

Andrew Cramer, Online Partners CEO, said: “. . .eCommunity is fully-interactive market research, advertising and promotion that reflects the commercial activities of the ‘real world,’ where the give-and-take between buyer and seller is part of the promotion process.”

The newly launched Gay.com Network will be the first Online Partners site to offer the eCommunity e-commerce program. The Gay.com Network unites the content, community and advertising efforts of Internet-focused Gay.com and Gay.Net with onQ on America Online.

Online Partners, an affinity group marketing company that develops large e- commerce-friendly communities on the Web, said it will be introducing the eCommunity e-commerce program to advertisers over the next 60 days.