FT Debuts 'Semantic Profiling' Ad Matching

The UK's Financial Times has rolled out a 'semantic profiling' service called 'FT Smart Match', which assesses the meaning of news content on FT.com and allows advertisers to match their copy with relevant articles.

Smart Match uses text analytics software provided by Smartology to scan both the advertiser and publisher's content using natural language processing and 'ontology driven algorithms' to build a model of 'significant concepts'. These concepts are weighted and stored as content profiles so the system can select the most relevant ads to display alongside.

According to the FT, during the pilot stage, Smart Match increased engagement rates for advertisers' content up to tenfold, and twelve new clients have signed up to use the service.

Jon Slade (pictured), the newspaper's Commercial Director, Global Digital Advertising and Insight, said: 'Delivering relevant content from our advertising partners in a timely and transparent way has proven to be a very attractive proposition for brands and readers. The FT is committed to providing the utmost value to our advertisers by helping them reach our exclusive and highly sought-after audience in environments that are complementary and engaging.'

In separate news, WPP's marketing technology company 24/7 has acquired London-based semantic advertising solutions firm Crystal Semantics, which also uses technology to match advertising to the meaning of a page of web content in order to reduce the risk of inappropriate ad placement.

Web sites: www.ft.com , www.smartology.net and www.wpp.com .