inCommon Integrates Downtown Push Technology with Leading Ad Tracking, Intelligent Agent, and Commercial Database Products; Agreements with NetGravity, WiseWire, and Informix Increase Demographic and Advertising Knowledge Resulting in Publisher Revenue Gains

Business Wire, March 13, 1997

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 13, 1997--Internet publishers now have access to more accurate ad scheduling and tracking, database-driven marketing, and anonymous user demographic information as a result of new agreements announced today by inCommon, LLC that unite its Downtown push publishing framework with NetGravity's AdServer, WiseWire's intelligent agent, and Informix's Universal Web Architecture. For the first time, Internet publishers have a comprehensive solution for building smart push channels that automatically learn and adapt to user preferences, allow more targeted, personalized Web advertising, and capture previously untrackable ad impressions. These abilities give publishers better information to focus their content offering and increase both ad effectiveness and revenues.

"For the Web to take the next step as a commercially viable media platform, we need to move from counting arbitrary hits on servers to true subscriber knowledge and awareness," said Jay Verkler, co-founder and CEO of inCommon. "Together, our companies have succeeded in advancing Internet publishing from simple Web servers and tools to a sophisticated set of integrated technologies for growing, maintaining and enhancing the value of a customer base."

Downtown is the industry's most comprehensive push technology publishing platform, offering acceleration and delivery of top Web content directly to users. Downtown integrates automatic content delivery, new content notification, and accelerated Web browsing in a single, easy-to-use product that can be personalized for individual use. Downtown resides on a user's screen in the form of a convenient channel bar -- similar to a toolbar.

Improved Ad Tracking

NetGravity's AdServer is the industry-leading solution for offering advertising on an Internet Web site. AdServer gives Web sites the power to manage advertising inventory, dynamically target ads to the right audiences, measure results in real time and automate sales efforts.

Industry data indicates that anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of ad impressions may never be captured or reported -- and are therefore not billable -- by traditional Internet publishing systems because until now the ad tracking function has been limited to the server- side only. These systems cannot account for impressions served out of a user's cache (previously fetched), a corporate caching server (fetched by another user) or an ISP's caching infrastructure. As a result, many users may see an ad, but only a single impression is recognized by the server as billable.

With inCommon's Downtown client, however, publishers can track and report all the ad impressions served to a browser regardless of their source -- even if the ads are viewed while disconnected from the Internet -- and in a completely auditable way. These additional ad impressions can be reported directly through NetGravity's standard ad tracking system resulting in directly increased advertising revenues.

Additionally, Downtown's built in user pattern tracking and reporting allows AdServer to target users more directly without compromising user privacy. Better psychographics and anonymous demographics allows publishers to substantiate more advantageous advertising rates through more targeted ads.

"Through our agreement with inCommon, NetGravity's AdServer becomes the only ad management and tracking system capable of capturing ad clicks even after the ads have left the server," said John Danner, president of NetGravity. "With more ad clicks and better targeted advertising, publishers will be able to raise their cost per thousand rates to better reflect their actual value."

Unprecedented Personalization

WiseWire uses advanced neural network technology and collaborative filtering to actually "learn" customers' content preferences to predict the value of new information to each subscriber. Over a relatively short time, WiseWire builds accurate, anonymous demographic and psychographic profiles of each customer's interests, and delivers new information based, not only on subject, but also on personal relevance.

Combining WiseWire's customer profiling with Downtown's channel subscription mechanism lets publishers create intelligent, self-tuning channels that can filter through huge volumes of information to deliver what users actually want. Publishers can gain a deeper understanding of users interests, likes and dislikes based on article feedback and selection. Combined with NetGravity's AdServer, it becomes possible to tailor ads to specific user interests without violating customer privacy.

"With the addition of WiseWire technology to inCommon's Downtown publishing environment, push publishing now has the ability to automatically adapt channels and tailor content to user interests, not just keywords," said Mike Kaul, CEO of WiseWire Corporation. "With both a psychographically and demographically defined audience, publishers can personalize content and advertising to subscribers' unique interests."