Amit Avner is CEO of Taykey, an online advertising technology company.
AdExchanger.com: Please provide a bit of background on you. And, where did you get the idea for Taykey?
I’m 25 years old, from Israel, now living in New York. I started the company 2 years ago with my co-founder, Itay Birnboim, and later we were joined by our CTO, Omer Dror. I have a bachelors in Computer Science and I’ve been an engineer all my life. I started my first company, called WittySearch when I was 14 (it was a search engine). Taykey started as something completely different, that ended up being a trend platform. Our first thought was to provide users with a dashboard of data, but then we realized that it’s impossible for advertisers to act in real time. And that’s the idea we had – a real-time trending, advertising platform.
What problem is Taykey solving?
Advertising in social media is not as good as it should be. Researchers show that 30% of time spent online is on social media, and yet – The advertising dollars are now flowing there, that’s because the new medium needs better tailored advertising solutions. And that’s where we come in.
Advertising is more effective, gets higher recall and perceived with better positivity if it’s delivered in the context of what’s new, current, and popular. It generates brand uplift, and better user engagement – Social media is an engaging media, we want to create a more engaging advertising experience.
Do you consider your company a demand-side platform?
Yes, I think a DSP is the term that describes us best. But I classify us as an advertising platform.
Everyone says that they have behavioral demos. What makes Teykey’s demo set better? How does Taykey differentiate, in general?
We don’t have behavioral demos. Behavioral is nice when it comes to ad networks. If you want to create an engaging experience on social media, no matter if you are on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Digg or FourSquare – you need to get the user’s attention. And the way to do it, is to tackle what’s trending.
Furthermore, we are privacy safe – And we don’t build behavioral profiles on users.
Do you think the social web can compete with search in terms of effectiveness for advertisers and yield for publishers? If so, can Facebook compete with Google?
Yes, of course. For search, intention based advertising was the key. Now, we just need to find the key for social advertising, at Taykey, we think trends is the key.
How does Taykey map demos to trends?
It’s based on a semantic technology we developed in the last two years to enable us to do that based on public data.
Doesn’t creative have an impact on demos and the success of campaigns? How do you manage this “dial”, if you will?
Creative has a huge impact. Currently, we serve ads with “generic” creative, but when we detect and forecast a big upcoming trend we contact the advertiser and suggest they will create a specific creative for this trend. Creatives on social media are rather simple, so it’s not problem. And the advertiser can always add more trend specific creatives.
What is the target advertiser market for Taykey?
Currently, we work with big brands. But any advertiser can work with Taykey – And we hope that as time goes along more and more smaller advertiser will work with us.
Please discuss your pricing model. How transparent is Taykey on its margins with advertisers when buying on their behalf?
It’s a very simple model that was created as a request from our clients, we charge a fixed price per CPM/CPC – And we do all the rest.
A year from now, what milestones would you like to have accomplished?
Build a better advertising experience on social media, which will result in happier advertisers and happier users (who will get better suited ads). Advertising is a medium of information, if the advertising is good, it creates value for the user. And that’s what we want to create. A better experience for the user.
Follow Amit Avner (@AmitAvner), Taykey (@taykey) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.
