CitizenNet Launches Desktop Marketing Platform

In the US, Facebook ad targeting company CitizenNet has launched a desktop marketing platform. The company is backed by movie and television star Ashton Kutcher and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Ron Conway.

CitizenNet says small firms can now act as their own media buyer using predictive behavioural targeting automation hitherto available only to large brands and companies.

The platform uses social media analysis, not cookie technology, to predict large groups of new audience segments that are likely to be interested in an offer. The tool utilizes features within Facebook such as trend analysis, sentiment and language processing techniques to predict new segments. An artificial intelligence algorithm, utilizing over a billion ad impressions and over twenty social and language features is able, claims the company, to predict the clickthrough-rate (CTR) of an ad with a margin of just 0.01%.

CitizenNet can also work with other self-serve tools. The company's first integration partner is event organizing site Eventbrite, whose users can now instantly run a Facebook advertising campaign for an event just by typing in the Eventbrite web address.

Dan Benyamin, co-founder and CEO of CitizenNet, said: 'A company's Facebook presence provides an easy, effective way to actively engage with their core audience. As brands develop, they may need to boost organic growth or reach into completely new market segments. Thus we have trained our system to understand and grow audiences in the most effective way, in turn creating 'Desktop Marketing' - which allows savvy marketers to do more in less time, with fewer additional resources.'

CitizenNet was founded in 2009 by Dan Benyamin and Mike McGinley and is on the web at www.citizennet.com .