Most organisations are pretty happy about the regulatory role planned for corporate web space, advertiser networks and commercial portals but very real concerns surround the plans to audit and regulate surrounding content contained in social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter et al which all fall into the “non-paid for” sector.

Over the last few months some (less than “straight”) organisations have been using social media to actively solicit User Generated Content and then re-publish it within their own marketing and when the new ASA regulations come into force this information will fall under the new remit. An example of this is rewarding people to “like this” or “follow me” and then subsequently use the “value” of the authority gained as an active marketing tool. Many in the industry are wise to this now and don’t attribute any value to, for example, the number of followers a company has on Twitter but, alas, the consumer is frequently seduced by this level of acquired authority.

Some areas will escape the reach of the ASA and they include search engine entries and press releases although it’s fair to say that lots of search engine entries are designed to be marketing statements that influence consumers so it is possible that at some point in the future this may also come under the ASA.

How this will change the landscape is yet to be seen. Most marketing communications in the unregulated world are actually compliant at the moment and with the ASA not really having any of it’s own teeth (sanctions will be via a voluntary code adopted by the media publishers/networks and then, at last resort, the Office of Fair Trading) it is probable that little difference will be seen until a high-profile company crosses the line and the ASA reacts.

As I spend most of my week here in Dean Clough and other places in Halifax, there are a number of places I check-in more often than others. A few weeks ago, while picking up lunch for the Connected crew at a local cafe, I pulled out my iPhone and checked-in. It then occurred to me that the cafe staff probably had no idea that I was promoting their business as they were serving me. This was live user generated advertising.

As the social web gains more momentum, this type of service could shift the way advertising and promotion is approached. We’ve already seen a big take up of all business types using Facebook and Twitter to promote their businesses, throwing in live location based data could make things very interesting.

The results were stunning (for 2001) and showed that 80% of the advertising spend was pretty poor indeed. Not surprisingly our client was over the moon with this new-found transparency and their business exploded when they invested in the right online advertising and had faith in the value of it. It was a real way to measure the actual return on advertising investment.

VITES™ 1.0

Born in the middle of 2003, this was the first time page content was linked to data recorded. It was clear that first time visitors to a website needed to be encouraged to return to generate revenue, and that returning visitors to the website needed to be treated differently to first timers. So a simple “tunneling system” was implemented that established where the visitor was in the sales cycle by understanding their previous activity on the website and also by interrogating the offline CRM system.

By doing this, VITES™ dropped people into the most appropriate tunnel and fed them tunnel specific content, imagery and, most importantly, applications.

Conversion rates rocketed. We had stumbled across a killer application for the web. In much the same way as Sergey Brin devised a method at Stanford University to “rank” sites in importance based on inbound links – which then became the basis for Google – we stumbled upon the link between recording and behaviour and predictive purchasing or behavioural targeting was born.

VITES™ 1.5

The original version was a killer. It doubled conversion rates overnight but it was very cumbersome to build sites around it and the clunky tunnels were flawed when it came to bookmarking and search engine maps. This needed addressing so a specification to improve the whole system was hastily put together in 2004 to meet these shortcomings.

This was a simpler beast to operate, more flexible, more powerful but still required hand cutting of the tunnels. We had tunnel vision!

VITES™ 2.x

A huge step in development was identified in late 2005 and the move to visitor profiles is set in stone. The whole system needed to be rewritten and was completed by the middle of 2006. This included a number of innovations including profiles, rules and confidence ratings (how confident the system is that a person fits a profile).

The latest platform is developed was the established LAMP platform and the task of rolling it out to the first handful of clients started.

The tool

Soon after VITES™ 2.x was launched it was realised that customers were coming up with great ways in which to use this tool. It became a very natural and easy tool to customise web content so sites could change at the weekend or overnight or when the call centre was busy or any other internal or external event.

Market leading online advertising companies became exposed to the technology and started sharing their data with VITES™ allowing it to make better decisions. We’ve only just scratched the surface with the VITES™ tool – there are a hundred or even a thousand more uses for it that we are yet to find.