OneRiot’s recently ventured into the advertising world with RiotWise, an ad format which places content in an emphasized position in their realtime feed. A few weeks ago, the realtime search engine launched a pilot program of RiotWise Trending Ads, a stream of ads that correspond to trending topics as they emerge across the social web. And today, after partnering with select iPhone Apps, Twitter Clients and Search Engines (Including UberTwitter and Digsby), OneRiot’s Realtime Ad Network, RiotWise, is now available to all developers.
RiotWise’s ads are comprised of content that similar to within Google, are served up via keywords being searched for. But unlike Google, advertisers aren’t bidding on keywords. Instead, content producers strike a deal with OneRiot to place their content in an emphasized (but clearly labeled) place in their realtime feed within the search engine. In the end, OneRiot’s ambitions are to help the content producer improve click-through rates by sending highly-targeted readers whose intent is to find specific content.
RiotWise’s Trending Ads will match trending topics with display ads that are highly relevant to the same topics within an application such as a Twitter client or iPhone app. Similar to the ads displayed alongside search engine results, OneRiot says the realtime relevance results in a higher click through rate on the ads. The system is enabled by OneRiot’s realtime search technology and PulseRank relevancy algorithm. OneRiot helps developers monetize social web applications such as Twitter apps, IM clients and iPhone apps and shares advertiser revenue with the application developer.
Now OneRiot is reporting that RiotWise ads have been performing at 3 to 4 times the average industry standard click through rates (CTR) for ads in realtime web apps (Twitter clients, iPhone apps, etc.). Developers also have flexibility to display RiotWise ads in the stream or correlating to trending topics.
Of course with these realtime ads, OneRiot runs the risk of surfacing irrelevant or spammy content. But as a realtime search engine, OneRiot has invested heavily in spam prevention and is constantly sorting through millions of pieces of content to determine what is relevant and what isn’t. As long as OneRiot produces quality advertising content, the new ad format looks to be a viable and profitable monetization tool for both publishers and developers.