West Hartford Company Changing the World of Online Advertising

The advertising world has always been “cutting edge,” and that’s become even more important as digital advertising accounts for an ever-increasing percentage of all advertising expenditures.

Online ads are everywhere – ubiquitous on nearly every web page that you visit. I sometimes think it’s a bit eery that every email sent to my Gmail account seems to have a different set of advertisements attached to it. For example, a recent email about Hall High School’s Pops ’n Jazz program gave me the opportunity to purchase tickets to a jazz show or find out more about an adult band camp.

Have you ever wondered how those ads seem to be so well-customized – or not so well-customized – to correspond to the content you’re viewing? Most online advertising is based on searches and keywords. But that can occasionally backfire. West Hartford resident Brooke Aker, CMO for the West Hartford-based company ADmantX, just helped bring a new product to the public that will profoundly impact the proper placement of online advertising.

ADmantX uses semantic technology, and enables content to be read not just for keywords but also for context, emotion, and even motivation. “Our smart system can understand what’s on a web page much like a human reader,” said Aker. The technology was developed by Export System S.p.A. of Modena, Italy. Aker worked as the CEO of Export System’s North American Operations and now serves as CMO of its West Hartford-based spin-off, ADmantX.

“Content elicits emotion in readers, and we are able to figure that out,” said Aker. The technology is so advanced that the word for that emotion does not even have to be part of the text, as long as the idea is conveyed. Such technology will be particularly useful to brand advertisers, who deal with feelings and intangibles and have been latecomers to the online advertising game. “These advertisers have long been the staples of successful TV and print ads, but we are bringing that emotion to the online market,” said Aker. Semantic technology can also provide brand protection and help avoid accidental missteps – like a keyword-based placement of an ad for Samsung’s “Blast” cellphone in a story entitled “Cellphone Blast Kills Man,” or an ad for a Jaguar automobile placed in a story about wild animals.

There has long been unease about the use of tracking cookies as an invasion of privacy. Since ADmantX relies on a completely different type of technology, it avoids any such concerns. “Tracking cookies may never be outlawed, but they may be restricted to the point where those being tracked would no longer be a representative sample, and the quality of the data would suffer,” said Aker. “ADmantX allows the placement of relevant advertising without any invasion of privacy, and can help increase the value of the publisher’s content,” Aker said.

Potential customers can test out a basic version of ADmantX’s web service free of charge on the company’s website, www.admantx.com, to see how effectively it works. The program is useful to publishers as well as ad brokers and others involved in developing online advertising campaigns. If you need assistance, there’s even a YouTube tutorial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h2Jbto5z58&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL) which Aker recorded to walk users through the process.

According to ADmantX’s website, Aker brings “his vision that the mass adoption of any technology only comes through the implementation of user friendly applications.” I found ADmantX to be simple and logical.

Aker is a self-proclaimed technology entrepreneur, and ADmantX is the third start-up he has worked with in the dozen years he has lived in West Hartford. “This company just went public last week, and it’s doing great,” he said. When asked what’s next, Aker replied, “I don’t like spending time making the trucks run on time. I don’t know what’s next, but I always like to do something new and different.”