ADOTAS – Our “online world” is changing at an exponential rate, each minute of every day and right beneath our fingertips. Devices used every day to access the Internet or to develop and store data are no longer just impersonal fixtures on a desk in an office building, university or home. Instead, technology has evolved these devices into a more personal and cohesive extensions of a person’s life, regardless of where they go. Our “online world” is now mobile – wires are vanishing, replaced with Bluetooth technology, wi-fi signals and the cloud. Driven by the desire to access information and products with a click of a mouse or touch of a screen, consumers have access to virtually anything they want to find online. With such a shift in the dynamic between consumer access and their device, media must evolve as well.
This kind of instant access is becoming an asset to consumers, publishers and advertisers, providing unprecedented ways to communicate and interact with one another in ways no other medium can offer. Monetizing this viewership is an unparalleled opportunity. However, users are quickly becoming complacent to the onslaught of online advertising. No one has perfected a way to accurately target users to create a more personal advertising experience, which has alienated users and is causing a rift in customer loyalty due to fears of what this new level of access means for personal privacy.
Enter AdTruth™ – a company looking to tackle the concerns that cookie-based, location-based, behavioral and audience targeting has created by:
• Putting control back in the hands of the consumer
• Increasing customer loyalty
• Maintaining the ability for media to deliver quality, tailored advertisements across all web-enabled devices.
The company was started by Ori Eisen, founder and chief innovation officer of online fraud protection company 41st Parameter and former director of worldwide fraud at American Express. Ori has spent years and millions of dollars in research to develop DeviceInsight ™, a patented technology used by the top financial institutions, travel and e-commerce sites to battle online fraud. This research uncovered unsettling trends where customer challenge rates were increasing while the viability of cookies was rapidly decreasing. Indeed, the writing was on the proverbial wall: Cookies were beginning to crumble.
This discovery gave birth to the idea of using the DeviceInsight technology to provide increased transparency, adherence to privacy and cookie-less tracking/targeting in the online ad space. This potent and highly effective device recognition technology has proven excellent for finding and stopping the fraudulent “bad guys,” and should be repurposed to help the online ad industry, which has been plagued with HTTP and Flash cookie degradation, growing privacy legislation in both the U.S. and E.U. and tracking efficacy with mobile. Cookies were not the only solution and could not be depended on long-term; it was obvious that media had to evolve.
Building a team of ad industry professionals, a new version of the technology and a subsidiary company was created, and AdTruth embarked on presenting their solution to 67 key players within the industry landscape, receiving over 50 immediate requests to pilot the technology. The technology was then presented to lawyers in Germany, where cookies are opt-in only, and to the FTC, and both greeted the solution with wide acceptance and enthusiasm.
AdTruth’s solution recognizes the DNT (Do Not Track) flag – a privacy solution presented by Mozilla (Firefox Browser) and recently adopted by all major browsers and Internet companies who are part of the W3i to allow for greater user choice in conjunction with other tools like the OBA (Online Behavioral Alliance) AdvertisingOption Icon offering. This allows the user’s privacy choices to truly be honored with this solution.
AdTruth is so unique because of its on-premise, server-side integration into a client’s existing data center infrastructure with no additional hardware requirements. This allows for increased speed while leaving no residue on the user’s device. With concentration on no latency or additional calls, those leveraging the growing valueof Real-Time Bidding (RTB) will find this extremely valuable. The solution augments the use of cookies for display advertising and provides substantially more visibility of mobile devices.
AdTruth announced their first client in November, Steelhouse Media, and has several ongoing pilots and new partnerships developing both in the US and EU. All in the mobile and display landscape are welcome to become a client of AdTruth, particularly mobile players and those in Europe struggling with opt-in only cookie use for 2012, as those sectors are just not making as much as they could if they used this technology. “Once the word gets around on the efficacy, it will spread like wildfire,” said Ori Eisen.” We’re doing the right thing. We do it differently than anyone else.” With over 50 requests to pilot the technology alone, AdTruth is sure to become an industry staple and a true game changer.