SEER: marketing intelligence tool

Situation

The world of embedded development falls primarily into one of two categories: Microsoft or Linux/Open Source. The Microsoft side wanted to better understand the online components of these two camps, and where influence exists within the space.

Approach

SEER was used to map out the dominant sites – both public and blogs – within the space and assign them to their respective camps based on content. One surprising discovery was made: that a very influential site, linuxworld.com, was not completely biased in spite of its name. After deeper investigation of its historical content, this site was recommended to the media team as a strong possibility for an online plan.

Outcome

Based on that recommendation, online advertising was purchased on the linuxworld.com homepage. That particular ad unit consistently performed three times better than of the audience segment that might not otherwise have been engaged with Microsoft.

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