Turn Inc., the ad network founded by Jim Barnett, the former CEO of Altavista, came on the scene with $8 million in a round of funding last year, and is now furthering its automated ad placement process with the launching of the Turn Smart Market.
Having built up its automated tools based on a machine learning platform that considers contextual, behavioral and audience targeting methods for online campaigns, Turn is taking this process a step further by making the entire service a fully automated market. One of the key differences with Turn's automated process is the extended options for ad placement as well as pricing, which includes CPM, CPC and CPA pricing, in a single market.
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Being that Turn is a fully automated process for targeted ads, the company is also quick to note that it doesn't require things like category or keyword for optimized marketing results. Behavioral targeting for ads is the primary way in which brands are currently experimenting with the online market, and ad networks are quickly adjusting to the changing needs of balancing brands with consumers, interacting in various ways across an increasingly social web.
One must wonder if behavioral ads, in this sense, should be fully automated. To that end, Turn does offer some manual functions that allow marketers to respond to consumer response and feedback, in order to tweak their campaigns for better results.