blinkx Adds Behavioral Targeting to Online Video Advertising Platform

SAN FRANCISCO, April 28 /PRNewswire/ -- blinkx, the world's largest and most advanced video search engine, today introduced Behavioral Targeting through blinkx AdHoc, the first contextual and behavioral advertising platform for online video.

Launched in 2007, blinkx AdHoc revolutionized online video advertising as the first platform to offer true contextual targeting for TV and video on the Web.  Leveraging blinkx's patented speech recognition and visual analysis technology to understand rich media at a deep and granular level, AdHoc's Contextual Targeting serves ads with unrivalled precision based on the content and subject matter of a specific video.  Over the past three years, the platform has run hundreds of campaigns, for some of the most recognizable brands in the world, including Coca-Cola, Shell and Microsoft.

Today, blinkx is adding Behavioral Targeting to the AdHoc platform.  Using its award-winning core technology to understand the exact nature of the content a user is watching, blinkx can track video consumption patterns over time, build an awareness of a user's interests and enable advertisers to match ads with an online video audience based on behavior.

As part of its commitment to transparency, user choice and education, blinkx has signed up to the UK Internet Advertising Bureau's Good Practice Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising (www.youronlinechoices.com), which aim to empower consumers and give them information and options about behavioral advertising.  AdHoc Behavioral Targeting is cookie-based, entirely blind and monitors user activity on the blinkx site only.  Over time, the system builds a multifaceted and accurate profile of the individual user's habits, and utilizing this careful behavior analysis, it attaches the user to one or more predefined profiles.  blinkx can then serve ads to users that are aligned to their past viewing habits and interests, regardless of the kinds of content they might be watching at another point in time.

"Our success with AdHoc to date is proof that targeting works.  In the past three years, we've run over 800 campaigns for more than 585 leading brands, and achieved up to 300% better engagement rates," said Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CEO, blinkx. "Our technology gives us a significant advantage by enabling us to truly understand our audience and the value is clear: targeted advertising yields better performance for the advertiser and a better experience for the viewer."

Advertisers can leverage AdHoc Behavioral Targeting through a set of nine Predefined Behavioral Profiles, or create a bespoke profile to reach an audience based on highly specific targeting requirements.

For more information on blinkx AdHoc and Behavioral Targeting, please visit www.blinkx.com/products/adhocbt.  

About blinkx

blinkx plc (LSE AIM: BLNX) is the world's largest and most advanced video search engine. Today, blinkx has indexed more than 35 million hours of audio, video, viral and TV content, and made it fully searchable and available on demand. blinkx's founders set out to solve a significant challenge – as TV and user-generated content on the Web explode, keyword-based search technologies only scratch the surface. blinkx's patented search technologies listen to – and even see – the Web, helping users enjoy a breadth and accuracy of search results not available elsewhere. In addition, blinkx powers the video search for many of the world's most frequented sites. blinkx is based in San Francisco and London. More information is available at www.blinkx.com.

SOURCE blinkx