The partnership will see Imagini’s technology deployed on the group’s flagship Mirror.co.uk and Mirrorfootball.co.uk sites and will enable the publisher to shift its online advertising model from simply selling impressions, to providing advertisers with valuable access to deeply defined and relevant audiences.
VisualDNA is a patented system that works by inviting internet users on a site to take part in a free online personality test via text links and display ads. The technology then creates highly detailed profiles with around 100 tags for each user based on their responses to questions revealing core demographic, location, lifestyle, attitudinal and motivational personality traits and specific brand preference data. VisualDNA then collates profiles into specific Audience Lists that can be automatically integrated into DoubleClick’s DFP and DFA products, enabling sales teams to sell highly targeted audiences according to a particular advertiser’s needs.
Matt Kelly (pictured), Digital Content Director for Mirror Group, said: "This goes way beyond traditional behavioural targeting. It's a rich, engaging experience the user actually enjoys and benefits from. And the remarkably detailed information their responses reveal is gold dust to smart advertisers.”
"Currently, the way we, as an industry, try to target relevant audiences is pretty much a scattergun approach. Buying millions of eyeballs in the vague hope that you'll hit a couple of thousand relevant users is, to be kind, rather inefficient.”
"What VisualDNA allows us to do is serve our users with a brilliantly engaging personality test, and then we can stop wasting users' time with ads that are of absolutely no interest to them, and give them ads that are. What we're seeing here is smart, targeted... and incredibly effective. This is web advertising 3.0."
The Mirror Group are the first major publisher in Europe to adopt the London-based Imagini technology.
Alex Willcock, CEO and Founder at Imagini, said: "We are excited to be working with Matt and his progressive team at Trinity Mirror. The data we’re seeing already is really compelling and shows the very diverse and rich audience that the Mirror sites attract. We’re really looking forward to working with equally progressive advertisers and their agencies to show how powerful this technology can be.”
The VisualDNA platform has already been implemented by a number of key publishers in the US including the Los Angeles Times, as well as partner sites including Acer and T-Mobile. VisualDNA has been developed to keep consumers in control of their data, with the system collecting Non-Personally Identifiable Information (Non-PII) and users able to easily access and delete their data if required at http://my.visualdna.com.
Imagini makes the following claims about VisualDNA:
• Proven to increase CTR by up to 320% and interaction rates by over 700%
• Profiled users view 240% more content than normal users
• 75% of users that start a VisualDNA product complete it
• More than 20 million people have been profiled
• A user spends an average of 3.5 mins interacting with VisualDNA products
About Imagini: VisualDNA
Imagini says: “Imagini is a London-based technology company founded by ex Creative Director of the Conran Group, Alex Willcock. Imagini was first funded in 2007 with $5m and has developed its technology to capture a rich understanding of a user’s needs and motivations. In 2009, Imagini was granted a patent for its method and system for computerized searching and matching multimedia objects using emotional preference. There are currently two further patents pending for the underlying IP. In February 2009, Imagini secured an additional $13.5 million in second round funding from Horizon Ventures, NorthZone Ventures and Atomico.”
