NetGravity Launches Global Profile Service

NetGravity delivered its Global Profile Service, the second in a series of offerings that began with the introduction of NetGravity AdCenter.

The profile service will provide customers with advanced consumer profile targeting capabilities.

By working with data providers MatchLogic and Aptex, NetGravity is building a flexible, open, anonymous consumer profile data source. Customers will be able to analyze and segment their audiences more acutely, providing precision targeting for advertising and marketing messages, the company said.

Digital marketing services firm MatchLogic Inc., a subsidiary of Excite, has been named the service’s premier supplier of consumer demographic profile data. Data provided by MatchLogic includes classic demographic profile information. Financial terms of the arrangement were not disclosed.

NetGravity will also work with MatchLogic to provide customers with additional profile data over time, based on advertiser demand. The demographic profiles MatchLogic will license to NetGravity constitute a subset of MatchLogic’s anonymous consumer profile database, the largest of its kind. MatchLogic collects, processes and analyzes four unique types of information on millions of users–demographics, geographics, search engine keywords, and browsing preferences.

Aptex, a division of HNC Software Inc., has been named as an additional data supplier, and will provide the NetGravity service with purchase intention data. Aptex will also provide unique product and merchant affinity or preferences information based on proprietary behavior models. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“NetGravity realizes every site and advertiser has unique marketing needs,” said Rick Jackson, vice president of marketing at the company. “By aggregating multiple data providers, NetGravity’s Global Profile Service will enable the thousands of Web sites powered by NetGravity to better understand their audience, and target advertisements and direct marketing offers with greater precision and insight.”

Available in the first half of 1999, the Global Profile Service will be priced according to usage.