Kanoodle Snares Dow Jones Sponsored Link Distribution
The company snags WSJ.com from competitor Yahoo!.
The company snags WSJ.com from competitor Yahoo!.
Sponsored links provider Kanoodle has built upon its relationship with MarketWatch to snare parent company Dow Jones as a distribution partner for contextual ads. The firm edged out Yahoo, which had previously counted WSJ.com as part of its contextual network.
The multi-year deal calls for Kanoodle to distribute its contextual links to The Wall Street Journal Online, CareerJournal.com, OpinionJournal.com, StartupJournal.com, RealEstateJournal.com, CollegeJournal.com and Barron’s Online. The agreement also includes Kanoodle’s second renewal with MarketWatch.com.
Kanoodle executives credit the success of the longstanding MarketWatch deal with helping convince Dow Jones executives to expand the relationship to other properties. Unlike competitors Google and Yahoo, which target by scanning the content of the pages, Kanoodle uses a 15,000-category taxonomy to classify pages. It also allows for targeting on demographic, geographic and behavioral characteristics.
“Ultimately, we look to create highest yield,” said Lance Podell, Kanoodle’s CEO. “That has resonated and generated continually higher yield, which wins you business.”
Podell contends that Kanoodle’s multifaceted targeting approach helps it capitalize on situations that might stump systems that rely solely on context. News stories, for example, are prone to unfortunate juxtapositions between ads and content, and certain types of content, by their nature, may not deliver the most relevant or lucrative ads. Podell cites Kanoodle network site NASCAR.com as an example of a site upon which advertisers might seek demographic, rather than contextual, relevance.
Yahoo declined to comment about the loss of WSJ.com, but a source close to the matter told ClickZ the site wasn’t a significant distribution partner.
Kanoodle’s distribution network includes MSNBC, MSN, TheStreet.com, the sites of the CBS Television Stations Group and of CBS Radio, USATODAY.com, the Associated Press, NASCAR.com, PGA.com, Bloomberg.com, and Autobytel.com.