Another way to monetize social? OpenAmplify offers new semantic tool

User-generated content (comments, message boards, etc.) can be especially difficult for publishers to control and therefore monetize. OpenAmplify says brands are wary of advertising next to content, as it could potentially be negative toward their brand — leading publishers to sell that inventory at remnant rates. Ampliverse's mission is to help publishers classify and understand user-generated content, lifting the value of ad inventory. 

 

Semantic ad targeting, or choosing the best ads to serve based on semantic classifications of content, is becoming an important attribute for publishers to add value to inventory. OpenAmplify is one of a number of tools and companies that have come to the forefront to help publishers and brands better match ads and content.

 

The Ampliverse product is part of the open-source OpenAmplify platform, which anyone can use for free up to 1,000 times a day. OpenAmplify is also working with taxonomy experts Earley & Associates for publishers that want to partner on big projects. 

 

The feature allows publishers to create their own taxonomy that they believe they can use to better target advertising, explained Mark Redgrave, founder and CEO of OpenAmplify, in an interview. 

 

“The reason we built Ampliverse is simply that most semantic pieces of technology that are on the market today have a rigid, fixed technology; you take it or leave it," he said. “[With Ampliverse,] the publisher has much more flexibility to tag and classify their content in a way that they believe is more relevant.”

 

Some publishers want to get more granular with classification (not just "gardening" but specifying different types of plants), he said. Or they might want to aggregate different topics into a classification of the group they're targeting, he said. For instance, rather than classifying something as "car" or "football" you can choose to classify it as "men age 25 to 35." Comments mentioning "Super Bowl 2011" can be classified into a group for an advertiser to target intention. 

 

 

Ampliverse works in conjunction with the OpenAmplify platform to understand what content means and then classify the content the way the publisher wants to. A publisher can either upload their taxonomy or create it from scratch in OpenAmplify.

 

Ampliverse can suggest related terms in an uploaded taxonomy, using a version of the FreeMind software:

 

 

After creating a taxonomy, the OpenAmplify API can be used by publishers to target ads however they like. Redgrave said they are also looking into working with ad networks and exchanges in the secondary channelst. (Already many ad servers layer semantic technology to target ads.) 

 

For more on the technical side of how Ampliverse works, check out this video demo (go to 5:14 for the section about monetizing social media):