New Service Offers Interactive-Affiliate Ad Publishing

By Michelle Megna

Tumri, Inc. today launched its Publisher platform, which is designed to blend merchandising with advertising with a combination of contextual and behavioral targeting that can help e-tailers promote affiliate partnerships.

Tumri Publisher works with the company's other core components, Tumri Network and Tumri AdPod. The Network is comprised of 1,500 online merchants and the AdPod is the customized advertising box that users create using Publisher, though pre-made units are also available. (The name "Tumri" is based on the Sanskrit word for a type of romantic song set to classical Indian music.)

Sell Your Stuff, Sell Other Stuff
To create an AdPod to help monetize your site by selling other products, users can select merchandise from any of the Network offerings, enter in relevant keywords and simply cut and paste the code to their Web site. To sell your own items, e-tailers can upload their catalog through an FTP site to the network. This means other Tumri users may select your merchandise to sell on their sites, garnering you a share of the revenue in an affiliate relationship worked out with Turmi.

When creating an AdPod, you can offer multiple items in one ad, set limits on categories — for instance select apparel from a vendor but exclude baby clothes — set price ranges, time frames and keywords. Shoppers can browse through merchandise, or enter terms to search for, and the Adpod will offer merchandise from various merchants with that search term without leaving the ad.

Tumri Triumvirate: AdPod, Network and Publisher work together as interactive an ad service.

(Click for larger image.)

When shoppers click on an AdPod, they are directed to the merchant's own Web site. The service also includes performance reports shown when a user logs into their account allowing publishers to fine-tune the advertising offers to better target their Web site visitors.

Hybrid Approach
"Neither behavioral or contextual advertising by themselves works so we took an agnostic approach," said Hari Menon, CEO of Tumri. "So if a visitor is on a news site, we don't know what they may be shopping for, so we use anonymous cookies and look and based on their history, we show them appropriate products. But if a visitor is at a vacuum cleaner review site, we will show you vacuum cleaners."

If you're interested in profiting through an affiliate-type partnership from brand such as Sears, Wal-Mart, Nordstrom and Macy's, you can do so by creating an AdPod with Publisher, which means you don't have to join each affiliate program and manage all the data feeds. Additionally, by uploading your own products, you can add another channel to your marketing mix.

Tumri earns all of its revenue by delivering customer leads to merchants on a pay-for-performance basis, using the retailer's catalog data feed as the primary input. Tumri pays content owners for the use of their ad inventory on either a CPM or revenue-share basis.

Does it Make AdSense?
Though it seems like Tumri is in direct competition with AdSense, Menon says AdPods are designed to be complementary, and can run alongside AdSense promotions. Google is reportedly working on an interactive-ad platform of its own.

And though Tumri AdPods don't use video, they do let consumers interact by entering search terms, and it appears it could be the beginning of a trend. Industry reports say that Google is testing a so-called "gadget ad" that lets advertisers use Flash, video, real-time feeds and transaction functions instead of using standard static display ads. Rumors in the blogosphere say we could see Google's interactive ads by the end of summer, so stay tuned for more news on this developing trend.

Michelle Megna is managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.

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