Social monitor BlabPredicts morphs into a data targeting firm for trends and keywords

Social monitoring platform BlabPredicts is now a data targeting firm, with the official release today of its new platform.

Previously, the Seattle-based company sifted social media, blogs, traditional news and other sources to detect trends and keywords that brands might find relevant.

Vice President of Product and Marketing Ryan Bowermaster told me that, as one example, a large unnamed company that makes fabric softener discovered through BlabPredicts that “musty” was a common term being posted by parents who had purchased used clothing or costumes for Halloween. With that insight, the company then directed some of its marketing to emphasize its product’s anti-musty effects.

But, he added, clients told BlabPredicts that they wanted to do more with the dashboard reports than simply read them and attempt to use that intelligence.

“We need the final mile, to our DSP,’” he recalled them saying. Now, he added, BlabPredict has “moved into being a data provider for media targeting [and] an actionable tool.”

The new platform extends the dashboard by enabling the keywords, trends and segments to be utilized directly by advertiser-focused demand side platforms (DSPs) like Horizon Media’s HX and The Trade Desk, and by data management platforms (DMPs) like Grapeshot and Lotame, for targeting ads into Facebook, Twitter and programmatic ad channels.

It features a capability the company calls Conversational-Based Data Segments, so that an advertiser can direct any type of relevant ads directly into ongoing social conversations that are segmented by keywords.

Bowermaster pointed to a recent use in a Valentine’s Day campaign for another unnamed brand. Instead of trying to compete with such popular terms as “love,” “hearts” or “Valentine’s Day,” the platform’s machine learning discovered lesser-known Valentine’s Day-associated phrases, like “forever lonely” or “Netflix and chill by myself.”

Those expressions of singledom, then, could be used by marketers to direct, in real time, Valentine’s Day ads to people who were self-proclaimed uncouples, so as to accompany their ongoing conversations — and hopefully to brighten their holiday.

While other platforms can detect trends and target conversations with relevant ads, Bowermaster pointed to BlabPredict’s breadth of data sources, associative discovery of keywords and trends instead of straight search and ability to handle virtually any ad media type.

He acknowledged that Taykey is “doing a similar thing,” but added that they’re focused on Google and YouTube inventory.

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.