San Francisco-based ZDNet launched “ZDNet Smart Serving,” a new
Web advertising program that enables advertisers to target their campaigns to
ZDNet visitors who fall within distinct geographic and demographic
categories.
Initial advertisers using the program include Bell Atlantic and Evineyard.
ZDNet Smart Serving lets advertisers direct their campaigns to pinpointed
segments of ZDNet’s online community of 8 million technology-interested
visitors, the company said.
“The highly regulated nature of our business requires that we handle wine
sales with each state differently,” said Michael Osborn, proprietor and
executive vice president of Evineyard. “Geographic targeting enables us to
maximize the value of our ad dollars, while upholding industry regulations.”
The geographic and demographic targeting comes in addition to ZDNet’s
content-specific placements.
“Now, our advertisers can choose between content targeting when they
want to be in the right editorial environment for their messaging, ZDNet
Smart Serving when they need to send tailored messages to a specific
demographic, or some combination of both when they want to maximize their
efficiency,” said Barry Briggs, vice president of advertising sales and marketing for
ZDNet.
The ZDNet Smart Serving program lets advertisers select from six target
categories, reaching potential customers based on: company size, type of
company, state, country, ZIP code and Designated Market Areas (DMA). A
proprietary database enables ZDNet to categorize its audience by matching
IP-based network affiliation and anonymous user activity data from its own
servers with internal demographic databases and a variety of national and
third-party databases, the company said.