April 12, 2004

Battelle on IntelliTXT

John Battelle has a nice, long post today on Vibrant Media's IntelliTXT offering. For those not familiar with the technology, its a way for publishers to place contextual ads behind links inside the actual editorial of a site. Post announcement, there was quite a furor from the journalist side--the wall between content and editorial was blurred, said the press.

I'll leave you to read through John's analysis. It's quite cogent and reveals IntelliTXT to not nearly be the monster that it was portrayed (by some as).

Personally, I was most inspired by his thoughts on publishers--contextual systems are great, but if they are going to survive and be valuable, the keys lie with publishers, waay more than with advertisers or with systems. Publishers have to use these things toughtfully: no offending placements (ie: in a breaking article about Iraq) and in ways that are seen as value driving (ie: in reviews of cool products of 2003).

Gary Stein: Senior Analyst, Jupiter Research.

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