Hundreds of millions of people surf the Internet daily, especially on social media and content sites, updating their status and chatting about current affairs. Conversely, advertisers are looking for the most effective ways to catch these users online, in order to show them customized ads in real time on the basis of their interests. Israeli start-up Taykey Ltd., founded in 2008, by CEO Amit Avner, CTO Omer Dror, and Itay Birnboim, claims that its technology is the key to enable advertisers to easily find the most relevant and effective target audiences.
Avner says, "We've developed a real-time online advertising system, based on trend identification."
Taykey's technology is based on complex algorithms that the company has been working on for two years. The algorithms analyze all content activity underway online at social network sites such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as talkbacks on traditional content sites such as "The New York Times". Avner says, "Just as Google indexes online information in order to display the most relevant search results, we collate and index content, in order to understand what is trending now online with each target audience."
Predicting what teenagers will talk about
For example, the technology can identify what 18-year olds interested in music will talk about, and see that they're currently talking about Justin Bieber, but in two hours the conversation will be trending Lady Gaga.
"The system will know to identify what is trending at any given moment, which trend is associated with which target audience, what a future trend will be, and how big it will get," says Avner. "30 minutes after the Susan Boyle video aired, we knew that it would be huge."
The ability to spot future trends has huge potential for advertisers. "We can tell brands what their target audiences will be interested in, in the future, so that they will be able to improve their campaigns multifold," says Avner. "Advertising on social media is not yet sufficiently sophisticated, but our technology can improve performance."
Taykey has raised a few million dollars to date. It obtained seed financing from Magma Venture Partners, and recently received its first major investment from Sequoia Capital. The company launched its beta product two months ago, and several major US advertisers are using it.
"Globes": What's your business model?
Avner: "We charge advertisers on a cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-1000 impressions (CPM) basis. Companies like Twitter still have problems with their revenue models, and our technology can solve them."
Avner says that while advertising on social media accounts for just a few percent of total online advertising, more than 30% of time online is spent on these sites. "We're talking about a huge gap, which creates a great opportunity. We're going to revolutionize the online advertising market. Online trends move very fast, and target audiences also change quickly. Our technology can bridge these gaps."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 15, 2010
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