NEW YORK, NEW YORK–(Marketwired – May 15, 2013) - ADmantX, the next-generation contextual analysis and semantic data provider, today announced that it has been included in Gartner “Cool Vendors for E-Commerce, 2013″ report, published on April 9, 2013, and authored by Chris Fletcher, Gene Alvarez, Praveen Sengar, Penny Gillespie, Regina Casonato, Andrew Frank.

The report reviews five vendors that provide innovative offerings in the digital marketing, social products, and digital and social e-commerce space. The main issue limiting the online advertising market is the disconnect between advertisement placement and the relevance of the copy. This is due to the reliance on keyword frequency without considering the meaning. Ads may appear on pages that have little significance to the assigned page or may produce counterproductive effects. Semantic technology automatically extracts the meaning in text to increase the relevance of ads, and maximize the website visitor’s receptiveness to advertising content. Read more

David Meyer of GigaOM writes, “In the development of natural language processing, the semantic web and so on, e-commerce provides a rich breeding ground. Companies such as Amazon and Google always want to find better ways to learn what it is potential customers are looking for, so the technology follows the commercial imperative. A Berlin startup called Versus IO is trying to apply natural language algorithms in its product comparison service, and it’s just closed a $2.8 million Series A round to do so. The round was led by Earlybird Venture Capital and also includes Dave McClure, who previously invested $100,000, and angels Lars Dittrich and Dario Suter.” Read more

SAN FRANCISCO, May 1, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Skimlinks, the leader in content monetization, today announced the launch of two new products aimed at helping publishers earn even more revenue from their content.

Skimlinks Showcases is a near-text unit that populates automatically with products mentioned in content. Leveraging Skimlink’s SkimWords technology to accurately identify product attributes, Showcases provide a visual way to complement publishers’ content with additional revenue-generating potential. Read more

Tommy Landry of Search Engine Journal recently discussed Google’s semantic search endeavors and the state of search in general. He writes, “Semantic Search aims to get at the real intent of the query, rather than simply matching a page to a search string. A good analogy is that of a headhunter or free agent recruiter. Have you ever received an email about an ‘exciting opportunity’ for which you were completely unqualified? Did they say your resume suggested you’re a fit? This is a case of blind matching of keywords with no qualitative overlay. Talk about inexact science! Simple logic suggests that semantic search will be superior to traditional, index-based approaches. Let’s look at some of the ways that Google has implemented Semantic Search.” Read more

Dave Ragals of Search Engine Watch reports, “Ever since last year’s rollout of the new product listing ad (PLA) system from Google, there’s been an ongoing debate about whether PLAs steal from paid search. And with similar changes pending from Yahoo/Bing, it only becomes even more critical to accurately measure… To truly turn the corner and make PLAs a win, there’s more to be done. Using semantic optimization, you can better position the products in your feed to match actual consumer intent. This is part art and part science. Most feed-based systems will do as much one-to-one mapping of words in a feed to related searches as it can find. But semantic technologies inherently better understand the meaning of the content and do a better job providing the right content to the right searcher.” Read more

How will webpage data be interpreted in the next few years?  The Semantic Web community has high hopes for ever evolving semantic standards to help systems identify and extract rich data found on the web, ultimately making it more useful.  With the announcement of Schema.org support for GoodRelations  in November, it seems clear semantic progress is now being made on the e-commerce front, and at an accelerated rate.  Martin Hepp, founder of GoodRelations, estimates the rate of adoption of rich, structured e-commerce data to significantly increase this year.

However, Mike Tung, founder and CEO of a data parsing service called DiffBot, has less faith that the standards necessary for a true Semantic Web will ever be completely and effectively implemented.  In an interview on Xconomy he states that for semantic standards to work correctly content owners must markup the content once for the web and a second time for the semantic standards.  This requires extra work, and affords them the opportunity to perform content stuffing (SEO spam).

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Celebros Inc., the global leader in site search, merchandizing and navigation conversion technologies, today announced the company is expanding its global site search offering to all GCS (Google Commerce Search) users. A new, no fee integration is in effect for all merchants currently using Google Commerce Search.

Celebros has the largest amount of IR top 100, 500, and 1,000 clients, which include AVON, RoadRunnerSports, BettyMills, SkyMall, Teavana, and other top echelon companies worldwide. Read more

According to a new article, “Upstream Commerce, which develops pricing and assortment intelligence solutions for retailers, today announced that the company has secured $3 million in funding. The proceeds will be used to further expand the company’s pricing intelligence solutions. The investment was raised from YL Ventures, Bright Capital, and private investors. Upstream Commerce’s pricing intelligence solution is a cloud-based service using advanced artificial intelligence, semantic analysis and data-mining technology that enables retailers to compete more effectively, increase sales and grow profit margins using 24/7 comprehensive competitor pricing and assortment tracking and analytics.” Read more

This week a new Big Data startup company launched, Ayasdi, co-founded by Stanford mathematics professor Gunner Carlsson and based on his DARPA-funded research in the area of applied topology, with $10+million in Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures and Floodgate.
The technology, dubbed the Insight Discovery platform, is explained to be the “first machine learning platform that combines computer science and a branch of mathematics known as Topological Data Analysis (TDA) that visualizes the entire dataset.” Hundreds of machine learning algorithms, it says, go to work exploring datasets to in minutes automatically discover insights that can’t be determined through query-based or ad hoc approaches.

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A new resource has been announced on Best Buy’s BBYOpen blog: Metis Alpha. Like Best Buy’s earlier forays into Semantic Web use, this one started with a business problem. As the announcement states: “These days, consumers have a rich variety of products available at their fingertips. A massive product landscape has evolved, but sadly products in this enormous and rich landscape often get flattened to just a price tag. Over time, it seems the product value proposition, variety, descriptions, specifics, and details that make up products have all but disappeared. This presents consumers with a ‘paradox of choice’ where misinformed decisions can lead to poor product selections, and ultimately product returns and customer remorse.”

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