Kitchen appliance specialist Smeg recognized that people were
using the web to research products in their category and wanted to
launch its first digital campaign in the UK. It built its first
campaign site, featuring its Retro range of FAB products
(www.smegretro.co.uk) and decided to work with an online ad network
to publicise it. Smeg realized that if its ads were more relevant
to web users, both performance-focused and brand-building campaigns
benefit. Hitherto, the only way to identify the subject matter of
page content have either been a reliance on publishers' page often
inconsistent tagging systems or traditional contextual targeting
which looks for keywords (and can misplace ads - e.g. cutlery ads
alongside content about knife crime).
Smeg's agency Ad Pepper Media applied linguistic science and was
first to market with 'semantic targeting' which now delivers over
one billion ads per month across Europe, emulating the kind of
relevance achievable as if the ads were hand placed. Ad Pepper
Media's iSense Network was used to precisely target web users
interacting with entertainment, home & garden and food &
drink content across a broad range of quality editorial-led sites.
The network relied on a "sense engine" developed by a professor of
linguistics to instantly understand what an entire web page is
about. This way Smeg ads were only placed in precisely relevant
locations throughout the network.
Since Q4 2008, campaigns have also been active in other
languages and territories. Although uplifts in click through
performance reach over 600% compared to conventional run of network
display advertising campaigns. Smeg opted not to reveal performance
figures.