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October 02, 2007
Germany's Proximic Launches Widget Contextual Ad Network
Founded in 2001 and backed by Munich-based Wellington Partners and Holtzbrinck Group, Germany's Proximic officially launched today. It also announced two large publishing partners London-based The Independent newspaper and Nature Publishing Group.
Proximic mixes contextual advertising and contextual content surfacing. It uses widgets to present results so that readers can find more-like-this content plus relevant ads.
Proximic got a better reception in the American media than we have seen in some time for a European startup, with coverage in The Red Herring, BusinessWeek, CNET and elsewhere. A big part of its PR success is that it boldly says it is taking on Google while hinting at technology that it touts as a new paradigm. We appreciate the way CNET interprets the mumbo jumbo: "Rather than requiring advertisers to buy ads based on keywords or categories, the system automatically reads and matches relevant content according to "interconnected patterns" in the documents that "are not even based on words," whatever that means."
In our view, the technology might be impressive, but we are not big fans of the invasive widget interface and think it will turn off a lot of readers and their favorite publishers.
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Posted on October 2, 2007 06:24 AM | Posted to Advertising | Permalink
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