Incentives-based direct marketer Cybergold and software maker Cydoor Technologies on Friday teamed up to
create a program that lets software developers build incentive marketing
offers into the applications they build.
The new technology is an evolution of Cydoor’s OnSoftware product, which
lets software developers build advertisements and e-commerce opportunities
into applications.
“This is a big step for us and our advertisers. We can now take the
incentive offers on our site and place them directly on millions of
desktops across the country,” says Nat Goldhaber, president and chief
executive officer of Cybergold.
“This enables us to target our advertisers’ messages more directly and
offer our customers only the offers they are interested in getting. It also
allows our advertisers to have their messages heard beyond our four million
members.”
A number of companies, including Aureate
Media and Conducent, are
exploring the opportunities for marketing through software.
Probably the
most high-profile such foray, though, has been by Qualcomm, which has built an
ad-supported version of its popular Eudora e-mail application.
So far, two software developers — Cowon
Systems, a maker of multimedia players, and NetCustomize, which offers a joke
utility have signed up to offer the Cybergold marketing messages through
their products. Cydoor says about 50 software companies use OnSoftware.
The companies will be distributing the software through Tucows.com, a download site that gets five
million unique users every month.