We often tour the web to seek for interesting and exciting current stories. Traveling around our favorite online hangouts, we try to stay tuned with the latest buzz.  This week, we’d like to present a few stories that have sparked our interest.

WordPress Plugin Competition

Being WordPress fans and users ourselves, we’re always interested to hear about plugins and features released.  This time we’re excited to read about new plugins announced for the 2009 competition.  Some of these include:

Exploring the World of Google Search

As the Google and Bing battle progresses, Google has recently made its diverse search options even more accessible to online users by dedicating a page where it details a selection of 16 different search features.

Read full story on Mashable

Free People Search Engines

It’s a well known fact that in this closely linked web world, you can now connect with anyone you know or have known, in some distant past.  Care to reconnect?  FinderMind has aggregated a list of 25 Free People Search Engines to find Anyone in the World.

Entertainment & Art

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland will be released in 2010, but we already got a glimpse at the wonder through some incredible pics that leave us craving for more…  It’s a shame we could not present all the images here, but we encourage you to pay a visit to Huffingtonpost and get a full view.

Exciting news on the front of Kontera publisher payment!

We already offer multiple payment methods to suit your preference.  Now, we’re glad to announce that if you’re using Domestic ACH as your payment method, pay-day will come even sooner. You can receive payment at $75 and cash-in on your Kontera earnings quicker and more often!

The change recently went into effect and can be utilized by publishers who qualify for Domestic ACH payment.

If you are a current Kontera publisher who meets these criteria, we invite you to benefit from this new $75 payout:

1. Login to your Kontera Publisher Center account.
2. Select the “My Account” tab and then follow the “Payment Method” Link.
3. Select the “Domestic ACH” option from the payment method dropdown menu and hit the “Update” button.
4. Please submit all updates to your account’s tax and payout info by the 15th of the month for changes to take effect on  the upcoming payout cycle. Any updates submitted after that date will only be applicable during the next payout cycle.

This change is just one of many to come as we continue to bring you the best  In-Text advertising experience.

Keren Zohar has been with Kontera for over two years, during which she managed HR operations and has overseen many organizational changes that accompanied Kontera’s corporate growth.  It was a pleasure to meet with Keren to learn more about Kontera’s recruitment and get a few tips about looking for a job as well as getting your foot in the door at Kontera.  In Keren’s personal life, she is a proud newlywed, and this is a great chance to wish her and husband the best–all the happiness and success to both.

With the current economic and employment market situation and implications, have there been changes in trends regarding  the way people execute a job hunt?  Anything creative or new you’ve seen?

There’s no question that people see a tighter gap of competition for a position.  We are seeing more applications coming in all the time.  This of course brings a new level in qualifications of experience, education, and other hiring criteria.  I also have found that people are really taking their job search further—they are utilizing and leveraging all their resources; essentially “anything goes”.  People have expanded their job hunts to rely more heavily on social media and online networking as a supplement to traditional means for searching.

We don’t want anyone to feel discouraged, so maybe you can clue us in:  as an HR manager of an online network, what strategies do you best relate with for finding the right candidate?

I search the web and use different recruiting strategies to find good candidates or potential employees.  When using the web, LinkedIn is a very useful tool, as it makes desirable web professionals more accessible and easy to contact directly without the need for a recruiting agency as a middle man. I also join and take part in professional and other relevant forums and in several Facebook groups  that enable me to reach a broader spectrum of candidates.   Like many companies, we also rely a great deal on our current employees and business partners to bring in fresh faces for our team.

Based on your experience, what defines someone well fit for Kontera?

First and foremost, we’re looking for people who have an aptitude for technology and are truly passionate about the web. Kontera  wants individuals who can demonstrate their passion for the web right off the bat.  A team-player attitude and willingness to be dynamic with their position are crucial traits.  Like the Internet, the company is evolving constantly, rapidly, and always presenting a new twist.  Employees should be ready for new challenges and get excited about them.  We work hard, but it’s important for us to keep the office environment fun and light—we’re looking for people who will contribute to making our coffee breaks and lunch time fun.

Since you are the first person to interview prospective employees, I’m sure you’ve seen all sorts of interviews, good and bad.  Any examples or tips as to do or not when interviewing?

Assuming that you want to get hired please turn off your cell phone before the interview begins… Another hint – if you forgot to do so – taking that call is not a good idea either . On a more serious note – there’s the obvious rule of thumb: come prepared!  Research the company you are interviewing with so that you know what you’re getting into and they know you’re serious.  It’s always good to get familiar with the market competitors so you can demonstrate a wider knowledge of the company’s challenges.  Work out your “sales pitch”, explain why you are the best possible candidate for a position, be ready to include facts that will promote your “personal  brand” into the answers you are giving the recruiter. Mention your successes and initiatives, but try not to come off arrogant – balance is key.

We’re looking for confident, energetic people where the resume and personality meet to reflect the way you’ll deal with our work environment.  For the most part,  recruiters are looking for focused people—those that present themselves with confidence and send out a message that they’re the best match for the position.

Bottom line, is Kontera hiring?

Absolutely – we’re always on the lookout for talented people and have recently opened a few positions in our US and Israel offices, which you can read more about in our Careers page.

Reaching more than 100 Million unique users per month, Kontera’s exclusive network features over 15,000 premium and niche publishers.  As many of our publishers know, upon joining Kontera we require that you use our technology as the exclusive In-Text ad provider on your website.  Since we’ve received questions regarding our Publisher Agreement exclusivity clause, we’d like to use this opportunity to describe the important rationale behind this policy.

A Few Words on Kontera’s In Text Ad Technology

Kontera’s semantic analysis technology performs at real time to dynamically hyper-link the words that most accurately represent and predict user-intent and engagement. When a Kontera publisher’s site is loaded by a user, our engines analyze the page to select the most relevant keywords and deliver the ads that provide the greatest value to Publishers, Advertisers and users.

It should be noted that keywords which are already hyperlinked are excluded from this analysis.  This means that keywords marked by other providers are also excluded by our system, allowing less of an opportunity to select the keywords that would yield the highest CPC and best CTR. ContentLink ads present the best performance on pages that contain text, uncluttered by too many links.

From the user’s side – pages which contain too many links compete for the user’s attention and result in an unpleasant user experience.  For this reason we believe that the highest quality and best user experience is the product of a perfect balance between text and In-Text ads.

Which Other Ad Networks Work Side by Side with Kontera?

All non- In-Text advertising networks.  Kontera’s ContentLink ads work alongside Google adsense, YPN, banner ads, affiliate networks, you name it- it works. ContentLink ads compliment all monetization efforts on a publisher’s site.  The best marketing strategy often results from combining two or more monetization techniques to maximize a site’s earning potential.  Explore to discover the optimal strategy for your site.

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. 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.

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

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.

Language advances at the rate of technology, and that means f-a-s-t.  Anyone making a living online knows how crucial it is to keep up with the new terms and phrases that amass in the industry.

A few months ago we published a post containing glossary terms and metrics relevant to the online advertising industry in general and more specifically to Kontera.  We’ve received some warm responses for this post and so we’ve decided to expand, introducing additional terms to the list:

Campaign Related

Cost Per Click- The amount paid by an advertiser per each click on their ad.

Campaign Targeting- Gearing an advertising campaign to a particular demographic.

ROI – an acronym for Return on Investment.  In other words, the percentage of profit that an advertiser accrues from a marketing or advertising campaign

Technology Related

Semantic Analysis- Semantic analysis involves text mining, term/phrase extraction, page vector analysis, associations and and other parameters. Semantic analysis is used to determine the context of the page and respond with relevant advertising or related content.

Contextual Relevance- in the field of In-Text contextual advertising, this term refers to the strength of the connection between an underlined keyword and the advertisement paired with it.

Computational Linguistics- a field dealing with the statistical and/or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective.  Kontera’s contextual analysis technology is based on the principles of computational linguistics.

Industry Related

Interactive Advertising- the type of advertising that allows active participation from the user.  See Kontera’s interactive advertising.

Rich Media Ads- a term for advanced technology used in internet ads, such as streaming video, applets that allow user interaction, and special effects.

IAB- The Interactive Advertising Bureau. The IAB is comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising.

References:

We put this list together using the following great resources:

Wikipedia

Yahoo Publisher Network Blog

IAB website

There’s a simple way to explain everything, even elaborate algorithms and systems…

Today we wanted to show a simple outline of user interaction with our ContentLink ads.  If you are entirely new to Kontera, we hope you will find this explanation especially helpful.

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For those of you interested in learning about the principals behind our contextual analysis technology, visit our Contextual Advetising Technology page.