"The promise of semantics is to bring a level of intelligence [to advertising]," said former Interactive Advertising Bureau President Greg Stuart. "It’s not quite there... advertising based on semantic technology isn't even close to improving targeting."
I ran into Stuart at the 2009 Semantic Technology conference. Stuart was on a couple panels discussing semantics as it applies to advertising and publishing. Stuart also headed the IAB, an organization that creates standards for the online advertising industry. So, who better to talk to about whether advertising was getting smarter - in other words better targeted - with the integration of semantic technology?
In software, semantic technology essentially provides a layer of meaning-centered code on top of existing technologies. In other words, software should realize that someone reading an article about gaming company Digital Chocolate probably isn't interested in an advertisement for Ghirardelli chocolates. This has been a problem that advertising companies have been trying to solve for a long time. They still don't have it right and semantic technology hasn't helped, according to Stuart.
Stuart, who happens to also be an angel investor, and who's also seeking an operational role at an advertising or media-related startup, says he hasn't found that billion-dollar-semantic idea yet.
Hi Bambi,
Thanks for this great interview.
Personally I think Semantic Web technology is beginning to deliver fairly well on it's promise in verticals such as news, business and entertainment that are already relatively content rich.
The technology will improve for other verticals as well as the quantity of online data related to them increases.
I've explained my thoughts on this in depth on Social Computing Journal here:
http://socialcomputingjournal.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=818
and here:
http://socialcomputingjournal.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=810
Cheers,
Mike
@pop_art
Disclosure - I am project manager at SemantiNet - a company dedicated to developing Semantic Web technologies. Check out our 1st product - Semantic Web Firefox addon http://Headup.com