Israel’s Comprendi gets Twitter nod for its ad tech

Social media is on the scout constantly for ways to make advertising more personalized and customized. And an Israeli company whose technology enables advertisers to change ads in real time based on a variety of factors, such as sports results, weather changes and trending topics, has caught the eye of Twitter.

Tel Aviv-based Comprendi won an award of $250,000 at the Twitter #Promote Ads API Challenge, with the ceremony held at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, for its Adaptive Creative technology.

This is how it works: a coffee brand, for instance, can automatically show an iced latte ad to a social media user in Los Angeles where it’s hot and sunny, and at the same time show an ad for hot latte in colder locations.

“If a coffee brand wants to advertise the most relevant drinks in any given geography, they would have to do a lot of manual work to achieve it. Our system allows brands to preload cold weather ads and have these ads automatically show whenever the temperatures drop below a certain threshold in any city in the US,” said Itai Ben-Zaken, Comprendi CEO and co-founder.

According to Ben-Zaken, the Adaptive Creative system provides functionality that is not available on Google, Facebook or Twitter, making Comprendi’s technology innovative and unique: it allows the advertiser to automatically trigger personalized, preloaded creative, based on what is happening around the customer.

For example, a beer brand could use Adaptive Creative to automatically launch ads when a soccer game is over. For fans of the winning team, the brand could target ads showing cheering fans toasting their victory with beer bottles. On the other hand, it would be possible to target losing team’s fans with an ad that says “Can’t win every day… grab a beer and cheer up.”

The opportunities could be endless.

“We allow triggering ads based on other signals, so if a fashion advertiser wants to have their new product’s ad show at the most relevant moment, our system can trigger these ads when it identifies trending chatter surrounding fashion or any given topic the advertiser is interested in,” said Ben-Zaken.

Comprendi’s CEO Itai Ben-Zaken at the Twitter event (Courtesy)

The #Promote Ads API Challenge is organized by Twitter to encourage innovation in the advertising technology ecosystem, providing the developer community an opportunity to build the most efficient marketing tools using the Twitter Ads API.

“We couldn’t be more excited to see the innovation that this competition inspired in the advertising technology ecosystem,” said Michael Engle, head of Ads API at Twitter, in a statement. “Comprendi’s Adaptive Creative solution is a great example of how we’re helping support development of the best marketing tools that leverage the unique characteristics of Twitter.”

Founded in 2013 by Ben-Zaken, Dr. Kfir Bar and Amit Seker, Comprendi uses patent-pending natural language processing (NLP), machine learning and deep learning algorithms to enable advertisers to reach contextually relevant audiences with the right messaging at the right time.

“I believe Twitter rewarded us with this prestigious and lucrative award because it makes sophisticated and impactful use of unique data which is only available on Twitter, and it is highly aligned with where Twitter is heading strategically,” said Ben-Zaken.