Sad to see the apparent demise of Phorm – and we’re particularly sorry for the shareholders, who seem to have lost somewhere north of £200 million.
Phorm was (is?) a good idea, and they thought so too. As they said on their website:
“Phorm is an internet personalisation technology company . . . with innovative products that can benefit everyone across the global online ecosystem.
Phorm’s technology preserves user privacy while at the same time seamlessly delivering a more interesting online experience to consumers. Phorm does not store a user’s browsing history or any personally identifiable information. Instead it understands what the anonymous user is interested in from a limited dataset of appropriate and pre-approved advertising and content channels.
For Publishers, Phorm’s Open Internet Exchange (OIX) platform changes their low-value ad inventories into high-value, premium ad space.
For Advertisers, Ad Networks and Agencies, Phorm provides a cheaper source of keyword text advertising across all categories, plus unprecedented control of performance parameters like recency and frequency. Furthermore, Phorm’s clicks have consistently produced significantly higher conversion rates than its competitors.
For our consented and anonymous Consumers, browsing the web becomes genuinely more compelling.”
Leaving aside their slight problems with literacy (we try not to kick a chap when he’s down), we never entirely understood how specific was the targeting of the prospect.
At Where To Sell our targeting is absolutely spot-on, like a very well-briefed dating agency. We simply introduce the seller of an item to the keen buyer.
So far, our shareholders are happy . . .
