Poindexter Partners with Digital Envoy

Poindexter Systems, which provides technology to help advertisers optimize online campaigns, has licensed Digital Envoy's NetAcuity solution for geo-targeting.

Poindexter segments audiences to help advertisers hit the users most likely to be interested in their offerings. Segmentation is based on such factors as time of day, connection speed, income, age and gender. Adding Digital Envoy augments the company's existing geographic capabilities, fine-tuning geographic targeting by continent, country, state, county, city or township, postal code, area code, ISP, domain and time zone.

Poindexter is licensing Digital Envoy's NetAcuity solution and will pay the company an undisclosed licensing fee. The service will be integrated into Poindexter's core product, the Progressive Optimization Engine (POE). Customers will pay no additional fee.

After running a number of head-to-head tests, Poindexter settled on Norcross, Ga.-based Digital Envoy because of the accuracy of its targeting, said Joe Zawadzki, chairman and founder of five-year-old Poindexter Systems.

Poindexter tested four geotargeting companies by setting up a dummy Web site and having friends and family visit the site. The visitors provided Poindexter with their correct ZIP codes. Poindexter then supplied the geotargeters with the visitors' IP addresses and asked them to guess the correct ZIP codes.

Digital Envoy is widely used in Web analytics and ad serving technology. DoubleClick signed on with the company late last month, and Accipiter began using the company's data in January. Use of the company's data is also at issue in a lawsuit it filed against Google in early March. Digital Envoy company claimed that the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant was improperly using its technology to target advertising by geography.

Poindexter's technology works at the moment when a user requests a Web page. The accompanying ad request is redirected to Poindexter. The company analyzes the user's demographics anonymously and, in a millisecond, decides which of a series of an advertiser's ads -- if any -- would be best served to that user.

For example, users in their 20s might be most receptive to a low-interest card from a credit card company, while those over 50 might fancy a gold card. POE determines these demographics on the fly and sends the appropriate offer to the appropriate user.

Now, with Digital Envoy, that user will be more precisely identified as to geographic location, Zawadzki said. Ads for cold-weather gear, for example, could be targeted to users in the north, while ads for beach-going accoutrements could go to those in more southern climes.