On Monday, May 18th Lori Xeller, Kontera’s senior director of sales, and Starcom Worldwide’s Patrick Shaughnessy, presented a Master’s Class titled “Leveraging the Semantic Web” at the iMedia Agency Summit in Austin, TX. The class focused on how marketers can leverage the semantic web to drive branding and performance advertising.

Lori showcased the benefits of the semantic web, how it differs from contextual advertising, and how Kontera’s semantic technology delivers a very high level of engagement and qualified user to the advertiser.

• Story-Level Contextual Targeting
• Advanced Semantic Analysis
• Customized Solutions
• Exclusive In-Text Site Representation to 18,000+ sites
• Network reach to 100MM Uniques (73MM U.S., comScore April 2009)

Patrick, who represents clients Sun and Blackberry, highlighted the benefits Sun experienced using the semantic web and the strong campaign results Kontera delivered for Sun’s Try & By campaign.

Sun Intel Try & Buy Campaign Results:

• Sun Intel Try & Buy Q1 Engagement Rates: 8% – 10%
  - Trending steadily through Q2
• Q1 2009: In-Text’s cost per initiated registration was nearly 5X lower than the cost per initiated registration from banner ads.
• In-text has driven 80% of all submitted applications for this Sun Try & Buy campaign, but with less than 40% of the spend.

To find out more about the benefits of Kontera and the semantic web, read Lori’s interview at iMedia Connection

2009 has already seen its fair share of dramatic events and we’re not even half way through yet… Recent days have stirred up much fascination across the globe with two news stories unfolding something of humanity’s link to the past and to the future.  The launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis has made an appearance in our current events category attracting many, many interested clicks to those who choose to make money with blogs. Could also have something to do with Star Trek’s box office popularity …  Another incredible scientific achievement is the uncovering of Ida, an ancient primate fossil, 47-million years of age, believed to form a crucial “missing link” between our own evolutionary branch and the rest of the animal kingdom.  Over the past few days “Fossil” has turned into a very popular, clicked term.

“Olivia Wilde” represents yet another hot keyword, the “House” star who tops Maxim magazines annual “Hot 100″ list is also dominating our Entertainment category. Congratulations to Kris Allen on coming in first on season 8 of “American Idol,” even though yesterday was the season finale we’re certain  this show will continue to receive a lot of click attention. “Wolverine” is our most clickable movie and “Blink 182″ upcoming reunion tour is also starring on the list.

There are many more interested trends manifested in our top clicked Keyword list some are seasonal like “Mother’s Day” and “Prom dresses” while others maintain a constant click appeal – “New iphone” is a sure bet as the electronics topic always fares well among publishers who make money with blogs.

Kontera’s Top Keywords Post Series brings to you the most clicked terms per category each month. For additional posts visit Top Clicked Keywords.

>> Find out more about making money with blogs

Tired of browsing through streaming video sites just to hear the latest hit songs or an obscure beat?  Often music searches on the web end in a tragic stream of low quality, choppy, disastrous renditions of your favorite jams.  The music search is over as Kontera is glad to present our May Publisher of the Month: musicremedy.com.

MusicRemedy is an extensive source of information completely music-centric, of course.  The site includes everything a music lover could look for including news, songs, pictures, videos, a forum and much more.  MusicRemedy.com allows users to listen to full songs, watch full videos, and have other multi-media experiences completely free of charge.  This is a fantastic way to help potential music buyers decide what they like the best or just get introduced to tracks they wouldn’t otherwise hear.

One thing that MusicRemedy.com has done to set itself apart from other music sites is include a section dedicated to contests.  This section features opportunities for users to win great prizes by answering music trivia questions.  Some of the questions take some major digging in order to find answers, but are proven well worth the search as prizes like music memorabilia, autographed CD’s, and gift sets are given away regularly.

As part of Kontera’s Publisher of the Month series, we had a chance to interview Jermy Leeuwis MSc of MusicRemedy.com to gather insight on this truly “note-worthy” online music destination.

What inspired you to start Musicremedy.com?

My passion for music, to keep it short. Like most people, I too have been listening to music for all my life. I am not a great singer nor dancer but I enjoy listening to (new) music. Listening, watching, reading and writing about music became my passion. Combine music and some computer-skills, you have a music website titled “MusicRemedy”.

Dedicated music fans are sometimes known to be vocal and opinionated, and with the idea of Web 2.0 at full reign, what have you done to provide an outlet for user-input on Musicremedy.com?

There are different kinds of being ‘dedicated’ to music. The dedicated music fans, MusicRemedy targets at, want to be info- and entertained without being too ‘Mr. Know-It-All’. This means that they want to have fun through reading, commenting, listening and watching their favorite music.

What strategies do you employ to create such a great balance of content ranging from well-known artists as well as independent and non-label-affiliated musicians?

It is quite simple: “Let your visitors be the judge.” This means that MusicRemedy features new music everyday whether it is independent or famous. Naturally, a selection has been made of the finest so visitors will listen to the latest and the best. This way the visitor does not have to search hours for new songs but uses his time wisely to listen to great music on MusicRemedy.

Musicremedy.com covers a wide range of music content, based on your users’ feedback, who are the current top five artists?  What do they have in common if anything?

Naturally, Hip-Hop and R&B are doing very well the last few years but rock is still rocking . Anyway, here goes: Eminem, Keyshia Cole, Lady Gaga, Kid Cudi, Elliott Yamin.
All five have in common that the music genres ‘Hip-Hop’ and ‘R&B’ have become popular. These songs can be categorized as Hip-Hop or R&B but also as pop songs. I know there are quite a few people who will disagree but the facts show otherwise.

When did you start monetizing Musicremedy.com and what role does In-Text advertising play in your overall monetization strategy?

Musicremedy started over ten years ago and grew over the years to a loveable music site. About nine years a few companies were interested in advertising, while we were trying to make the site bigger and better. At some point the site’s development and maintenance requires some costs and so the site had to make a few bucks.

After a few years new sorts of advertisements appeared on the internet (ie., in-text, video, etc…). In all business activities you need to stay focus and innovate. So we did. In-Text has been around a few years but not as heavily targeted as nowadays. I assume this is because a lot of blogs use them.

The main advantage of Kontera In-Text is that it is not annoying like popups and visitors can choose whether to view and/or click. This combined with quality content, will give you better earnings without lowering other earnings.

In what direction do you see your site moving in the coming year?  Are there specific sections of your site that you are working to develop further?

There are quite a lot of movements coming up. First, a fresh new design we have been working on for over a year. Afterwards very interesting functions will be added for even more information about artists and naturally, more interaction for our visitors. Sorry but I can not tell you more because it is highly classified .

Ok ok, if you insist. Our latest section “Upcoming Songs” is one of these new developments which is becoming more popular every minute. In the upcoming months this section will get more user-input. This section, and upcoming ones, are also available as RSS-feeds making it interesting for visitors to use on their blogs or personal sites.

The Kontera Publisher of the Month series kicked off in January of 2009. A publisher is selected from Kontera’s network each month and provides an insider’s perspective on what it takes to manage a successful site. To learn more visit the Publisher of the Month Category.

The online content and advertising industry is a dynamic, fast changing environment where new and creative ideas are constantly introduced.  It is fascinating to note that only a few short years ago, in the early 2000’s, In-Text Advertising was still the new kid on the block.  As the online advertising landscape has undergone many changes in recent years, the In-Text Advertising industry has evolved immensely in this short period.

Today, we are glad to interview Kontera’s Vice President of Products and one of the company’s founders, Assaf Henkin, whom we want to ask more about the evolution of In Text Advertising.

For starters, can you tell us a little bit about the history of Kontera In-text?  What sparked the idea? When did the technology first get developed?

Kontera and the In-Text vision behind Kontera started with the idea of connecting information online.  Meaning that instead of users using search engines to search for information, the question we asked ourselves is how can we proactively link keyword phrases and help users connect to additional information?  So we started with an application where users could click on different keyword phrases and get relevant information from different content sources, product reviews, encyclopedias, commercial information etc.  However, the business evolution prompted us to go more towards advertising and that’s how in text advertising evolved as a subset of In-Text information.

If you think about it, advertising is information and our vision from day one has been to make advertising relevant and useful enough so it’s used as an additional information source.  In the last 18 months we’re going back to fulfilling that promise with our Hybrid product that combines related content and advertising. The future holds exactly that. Our mission is to connect the entire web.  The idea is that every page with text online would have several links powered by Kontera.  These could be links to ads and/or related information.  Our duty, role and responsibility are to make these links relevant and useful so that they’ll become a powerful information tool for users.

What did the market look like when Kontera first emerged?

The market was much less sophisticated-we were pretty much the pioneers of this type of information browsing and consumption.  The market was nascent in the sense of both advertising and content consumption.  You didn’t have any mature syndication models, distribution, RSS, information consolidation-things which are obvious today.  So what we did back then was very revolutionary.  Advertising was also in its very early stages. There were no sophisticated metrics, monitoring or advanced measurement.

Today, the online ad and information market are very different and Kontera is a natural fit in this world because of our level of relevancy, targeting, and the utility value we provide users and the level of performance we bring to advertisers.

Did you have to convince the market back then?

Obviously introducing a new product to the market requires some education. Some publishers were standoff-ish, as they didn’t want to have any automatic mechanism that would add links to their pages. BUT, this is a few years back.  Today, we see a constantly growing adoption rate. The evolution of user-information consumption is also to our benefit, because the model is no longer confined to search and portals alone.

For example, today, while visiting an a Yahoo or AOL page, users will also interact with content from external sources using widgets, RSS feeds, and other products that AOL implemented which are not necessarily controlled by the site managers or editors.  A site’s editors control its content and articles, but there are a lot of other dynamic components that change every time the user will refresh the page.  The change is based on who the user is, their geographical location, the evolving inventory, and this is something that is similar to what Kontera does.  Every time the user views a page that is utilizing our technology, we will select different Keywords, we can show different content and different ads. In a sense, the market is becoming more and more open to having less control and trusting technology as long as the technology delivers positive user experience.

What more can we look forward to in 2009 in terms of new development?

We’ve just completed a major release of our Publisher Center and by mid to end 2009 we’re going to do a new release of our Ad Center-our dashboard for advertisers.  We’re also working on some innovative content units and ad units that are part of partnerships with some of the larger media companies and ad agencies in the market.

Where do you think the In-Text technology is going in the coming future, how do you believe it will be embedded in peoples’ online behavior?

As I said before, we see In-Text as an inseparable medium for users to interact with information and the better job we do at it, the more interlined it will be with users lives’ online. Furthermore, we view In-Text as a very powerful product for mobile information and consumption because of the small devices and small footprints that mobile devices offer.  We are also looking at IP TV or the TV and video implementation online.  Think about video content, or the way TV and movie companies are consumed online today. It is clear that a few years from now, more and more people will watch their favorite TV shows online, using a computer. For our technology it would be a natural extension- a medium where, based on semantic meaning, and on a set of other parameters, additional information could be offered to the user.  This is another area where we expect that In-Text will become popular in the next coming years.