Claria is far from the first company to try and make using the Web a more
personalized experience, but the Redwood City, Calif.-based firm claims to
have one of the most effective solutions and it’s got plenty of test data to
go by.
Claria said some 800,000 users have tried a test version of its PersonalWeb platform since it was
launched a year ago. The free service has over a quarter of a million
regular users.
Today Claria unveiled Axon, a version of PersonalWeb designed for partner
companies to private label and customize. Canadian media giant Roger’s
Communications , Corel and ZTGroup are among the initial
companies signed on to promote their versions of PersonalWeb. Claria said
the three companies reach tens of millions users combined.
PersonalWeb is a customized home page that automatically presents users
with content and advertising that matches their interests. Claria said its
research during the beta test indicated PersonalWeb users interacted with
the site three times more frequently than with a traditional home page. Also, the
system’s behaviorally-targeted banner ads received up to 15 times higher
click through rates than traditional banners.
Content and product recommendations are nothing new. Amazon, for one, has
offered a recommend feature, based on past purchases and other buyer’s
interests, for years. But Claria said its offering is unique in its scope
and the pro-active nature of its ever-changing real-time feeds.
Claria’s patented personalization platform builds an anonymous consumer
interest profile based on Web browsing activity. It then finds the most
relevant content for a particular interest by examining the patterns of
users with like interests. Lastly, the system organizes and displays
relevant content and ads to users within Axon-powered Web sites, software
applications or hardware devices.
Claria said it was recently granted two patents (U.S. Patent No.
7,149,704 and U.S. Patent No. 7,181,488) for key aspects of the Axon
platform, including the use of a smart client to understand consumer
interests and deliver relevant content and ads. While Claria has filed 70
patents and been granted several, company officials said these two are the
core ones to the business.
Axon is the result of over $100 million investment over the past eight
years. Rogers Communications and Softbank have invested a combined $40 million the
company.
There is an opt-in registration required to use PersonalWeb, which can
also be shut off or on at the click of a mouse. The system tracks your Web
browsing anonymously and Claria said it does not collect personally
identifiable information on individual users. It also doesn’t collect or
track visits to so-called adult or X-rated content.
“We collect real-time information, but it creates an anonymous profile,”
Scott VanDeVelde, Claria’s CEO, told internetnews.com. VanDeVelde
also said Axon measures “usage intensity” tracking how often you visit
specific sites for example. As visits decline those sites and areas of
interest drop from the top showing on your PersonalWeb page or, if
consistently ignored, altogether.
Creative Strategies analyst Tim Bajarin has been testing PersonalWeb for
a month and said he’s found it useful. “It fundamentally tracks the info I
want tracked from stocks and tech to sports and entertainment,” Bajarin told
internetnews.com. “It’s a bit more customizable and intelligent than
the other portal start pages
from Yahoo and Google.”
VanDeVelde said Claria aims to help users get access to more Web sites
with the content they’re after. “And users are passionate about their user
interfaces, they’re comfortable with what they know how to use. So we want
to leverage that. There isn’t anyone we don’t want to partner with.”
