The technology, provided by Smartology, recognises the meaning of news articles, allowing advertisers to match their content to relevant news stories in real time on FT.com.
Piloted in June 2011 and, says the FT, going well beyond the industry standard of keyword recognition, FT Smart Match uses an emerging technology called ‘semantic profiling’ which analyses text through weighting ‘concepts’ and ‘categories’ to derive matching accuracy for advertiser content on FT.com. By automating advertising placement from content, the technology solves a major problem for advertisers and pioneers a new approach to display advertising.
According to the publishers, FT Smart Match has increased engagement rates for advertisers’ content up to tenfold. Twelve clients are now signed up and include multinational banking and financial services companies, a leading global business school, major energy and IT conglomerates, with more in the pipeline.
Jon Slade, FT’s commercial director, global digital advertising & insight, commented, “Delivering relevant content from our advertising partners in a timely and transparent way has proven to be a very attractive proposition for brands and readers. The FT is committed to providing the utmost value to our advertisers by helping them reach our exclusive and highly sought-after audience in environments that are complementary and engaging.” More information about these campaigns can be found here and here.
Mark Bembridge, managing director at Smartology, added: “Working with the team at the Financial Times has been important in the development of the Smart Match platform because of the depth and breadth of its content and its commitment to exploring new technologies.” It’s great to see such encouraging results and we now see a growing demand from other news organisations.”
