This feature article originally published on the San Jose edition of Examiner.com on May 18, 2011, at this link.
This article is part of Bonnie’s look into Silicon Valley Company Profiles and Startups.
Mountain View’s Pixazza is taking online advertising to new levels by transforming the way in which we interact with imagery online, but don’t take my word for it. Hailed as a top prospect startup, Pixazza saw its fortunes skyrocket last year after securing funding from prominent Valley angels and VCs (including Google Ventures and Ron Conway).
Pixazza founder and CTO Jim Everingham and CEO Bob Lisbonne are industry veterans with enviable experience in Silicon Valley (both careers once intermingled at Netscape during the browser wars). Aside from the extensive resumes, both men proved to be unyielding, drawing from their industry acumen and trail blazing a new path. Lucky for us, both were eager to talk about Pixazza’s latest expansion into new verticals and their future plans. To start, let’s see what Pixazza does and how they do it so well.
Partnering with publishers and advertisers, Pixazza identifies, tags and matches items in an image with products. Wonder where to find Reese Witherspoon’s earrings you noticed on the celebrity blog? By rolling over the image, Pixazza shows you exact and similar product matches in a broad range of prices and links you to the advertiser’s site for the purchase.
Through this unique, highly targeted call-to-action service, an inactive reader becomes an engaged shopper with a refreshingly subtle mouse rollover. Websites need not devote additional screen real estate to the service nor do they risk alienating shoppers via uninvited pop-up advertisements. A commission of the revenue generated from purchased products goes to both the partnered publisher and Pixazza. Regardless of a purchase, both parties share advertising revenue.
“Consumers appreciate relevant information when it’s invited,” Lisbonne tells me in a phone conversation. “It’s also the case that advertisers derive greater benefit when an ad is contextual, so our goal of pleasing users and advertisers are aligned.”
Pixazza has been equated to AdSense for images, a fair comparison if we look at how it enables publishers to tap into a revenue stream from their audience. Still, the analogy misses an important element according to the company’s CEO. “What it ignores is how we try to relate to the customers, “ says Lisbonne. “Our aspiration is to deliver related content. [AdSense for images] doesn’t quite capture our goal of making the web a place where users expect to find everything.”
With image recognition still in its infancy and stale algorithms unable to ascertain what people actually want, the Pixazza crew knew that they needed human expertise to identify what products are proper matches. Enter crowd sourcing. “At LiveOps, we learned how to harness people to do things they love to do,” says Everingham, who picked up service and crowd sourcing skills at the outsourcing call center.
Pixazza has another trick up its sleeve. Their Shopdot program effectively turns a publisher into an e-commerce marketplace instantly. With servers on the Pixazza end and a Shopdot domain name, a blog or other publisher can host an online storefront, generating additional revenue and traffic.
The fashion vertical is treating the company very well, but it’s a stepping stone to an even wider audience. Last month, the company announced that home, travel and sport websites would add to the lineup.
Ultimately, the Pixazza team envisages an emerging era where all online images will lead to greater insight- whether it’s for a product, food recipe or historical photograph. “Our vision is that every image on the web will be interactive,” says Everingham.
Lisbonne echoes his words. “We always envisioned taking our service to every major category on the web. Ultimately, that’s what we expect.”
Continue reading on Examiner.com: Pixazza: pioneering interactive web images – San Jose Web 2.0 | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/web-2-0-in-san-jose/pixazza-pioneering-interactive-web-images#ixzz1GtQtJQyf
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