Content or ad? Only Israeli web platform maker knows
My6Sense integrates advertorials – ads dressed up as news stories – with ‘real’ stories on sites. It’s not as bad as it sounds, says the CEO
Websites monetize their content in many ways, but until now, content and advertising (e.g., banner and text ads) have largely remained separate. That may change, however, if Israeli start-up my6sense has its way.
Until now, links to advertorial “news stories” (what the company calls “native advertising”) – or even real news stories that are sponsored links – have usually appeared above, below, or to the side of the content on a page. With my6sense, those links are integrated into the content area itself.
It looks like yet another web irritation. It ranks pretty high on the annoyance scale, actually, because integrating “advertorials” – stories that look like news but are really advertisements – into a news article or other type of information is as “in your face” as it gets. While users have learned to avert their eyes from the bottom of a page to avoid the sponsored content presented by companies like Taboola and Outbrain (both Israeli), there is no escape from my6sense links.
But it’s not as bad as it sounds, said my6sense CEO Avinoam Rubinstein, because his system presents relevant content that the reader will want to see.
“For example, if they are searching for prices on a vacation to Spain, the site will integrate links that when clicked will present them with information about what they can do on their vacation – restaurants, excursions, etc.,” he said. And no one is trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes either, added Rubinstein. “The sponsored links are clearly labeled, so there is no question of anyone being fooled into clicking on something they are not interested in.”
my6sense is about five years old, and has gone through some changes since it was first in business. In the beginning, the site was a “smart filter” for web and social media content, learning what users are interested in by monitoring articles and links clicked and forwarded. The system created an RSS feed that presented users with the content that they were interested in.
That engine has been revamped to present sponsored content via my6sense’s native ads platform. “We work with all the big aggregators to see users’ preferences, and with that data we build a content recommendation engine,” said Rubinstein. “It creates what we call a native advertising network that fits right in with the content on a site. We base our recommendations on profiles we have developed from about 60 million users.”
While Taboola and Outbrain offer their own closed native advertising networks to advertisers and publishers (meaning that they set the prices for sponsored content), my6sense “offers an open white-label native advertising platform that is used by ad-networks and ad-exchanges around the world, opening the world of native advertising to a huge eco-system of players,” said Rubinstein.
Although website owners have not complained too loudly about that closed system, there’s no question that some content – and some sites – should fetch more money than others, based on popularity, site placement, etc. my6sense sells sponsored content links via real-time bidding systems – the same way banner ad space is sold – guaranteeing a true market price for site owners and “opening this market to an existing eco-system, which is much larger than the current closed network,” said Rubinstein.
While some users, Rubinstein admits, might need some time to get used to the my6sense way of doing things, the platform is selling like hotcakes among advertisers – and for good reason. “We’ve brought the concept of ad auctions and programmatic real-time bidding to sponsored content, allowing sites to accept bids for placing the native ads on their sites,” he said. This has proven very popular among content site owners.
my6sense doesn’t care who places what native ads on which sites. “We supply the platform, and let the ad-networks, ad-exchanges, advertisers and site owners take care of the rest,” said Rubinstein. But like with banner ads, it’s possible that a “stray” native ad – like one extolling the virtues of abortion on a website geared to Catholics – could find its way into the content recommendation list. Such things are not unheard of in the banner ad world, where, despite the best efforts of ad exchanges, inappropriate ads show up on sites geared towards kids and families – creating, of course, a firestorm of negative publicity for the site.
If something like that happened to a site using Rubinstein’s platform, it could be a devastating blow to my6sense – which is why the my6sense platform has a very sophisticated filtering feature, which allows sites to check links inside out before displaying them. “Obviously no system is foolproof, and there is always going to be a chance that something unwanted will get through,” said Rubinstein. “But the tools we offer allow sites to be as tough and discriminating as they want to be when including a native ad. A lot of it has to do with reputation – a site like The New York Times may have more to lose from a rogue native ad than a site dealing with entertainment news, so they are likely to institute much stronger safeguards. The system’s tools can be utilized in as strict a manner as a site wishes.”
In the end, the responsibility for how my6sense is used rests on the site’s owners, said Rubinstein. “Obviously our system could be abused, with site owners putting inappropriate native ads and the like in their content recommendations, but word spreads in the Internet community, and content sites that don’t present what their readers expect will find that their readers move on. Our job is to help them enforce their policies – and to help them make money and increase the satisfaction of those who browse to their site.”
