Jennifer Zaino
SemanticWeb.com Contributor

An ASP version of Ad Pepper Media’s SiteScreen ad network that enables advertising agencies to keep their clients’ ads from being placed next to content they consider objectionable is now available.

The online ad network and digital marketing technology provider also is behind the iSense Display and semantically enabled iSense network for matching display advertising content to remnant inventory based on category-targeted opportunities.

The decision to provide an ASP version of SiteScreen was made after requests by the advertising agency community to apply its brand protection capabilities to clients beyond Ad Pepper’s own ad-targeting network, as well as within it.

“Our semantic targeting suite and SiteScreen are definitely growing strong and very appealing to clients, but we are not the only ad network in the U.S. and not in Europe either,” says Sacha Carton, director of product and technology development and director of the board at Ad Pepper. “The advertising community recognizes the strength of the SiteScreen solution and said they want to continue to do things with us on our [targeting] network, but there’s a lot of activity happening outside that where they would equally like the same degree of protection. So to not do this would limit the potential of the technology. I don’t think it will cannibalize our network business but will add additional business lines that will be very complementary.”

SiteScreen Agency ASP gives advertising agencies a platform that provides full access to brand protection management capabilities to apply to all of their ad media buys, across networks, and transparency into those campaigns through audit trails, URL tracking of where the ads were served or blocked, and a record of how content inventory was categorized in each instance (for example, content of adult nature, or content related to war and conflicts or accidents and disasters, and so on).

Currently Ad Pepper’s semantic technology rates specific web pages against 12 categories, but plans are in place to expand that to 18 content categories sometime in the first quarter of 2010. “We will add a lot more sub-categories so clients can be ever more precise in their blocking requirements,” Carton says. He adds that Ad Pepper also has noticed increased requirements from customers for custom category development for even more precise blocking needs. “Our core taxonomy in iSense has over 3000 categories so we’ve got lots of experience in building these taxonomic semantic systems,” he says.

Compared to the European market where Ad Pepper first launched its solutions, U.S. market campaigns tend to have a lot more targeting requirements, and also tend to be a lot bigger. That’s good, Carton says, because it lets Ad Pepper’s semantic technology be leveraged a lot faster.

“The more volume you run through semantic campaigns the more you are able to optimize them, and in that respect we are getting a lot of opportunities,” he says.

Carton says Ad Pepper has worked with over 500 clients on an international basis so far. “As agencies get more familiar with the degree of quality and classification and precision of the engine, this will lead to acceleration in semantic advertising requirements for brand protection and other issues,” he says.