Targeting Through Tagvertising

Editor's Note: In today's issue, Steve takes a look at a new phenomenon in advertising called "tagvertising". For example, many web users employ this form of bookmarking to keep track of items of interest, essentially, tags become online bookmarks.

WebProWorld Tagvertising = Blogging 2.0... Already? As you read this, millions of individuals are working under their own volition to create a new Dewey Decimal System for the Internet. In the process -- perhaps without even realizing it -- they are laying the groundwork for a new contextual online advertising paradigm called "Tagvertising." The consumer phenomenon is called "tagging" or "folksonomies" (short for folks and taxonomy). Tagging is powerful because consumers are creating an organizational structure for online content. Folksonomies not only enable people to file away content under tags, but more importantly also share it with others by filing it under a global taxonomy that they created. Here's how tagging works. Using sites such as Flickr - a photo sharing site - consumers are collaboratively categorizing online content under certain keywords, or tags. For example, an individual can post photographs of their iPod on Flickr and file it under the tag "iPod." These images are now not only visible under the individual user's iPod tag but also under Ask Jeeves now has tagging. And Amazon invested in a site called Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the

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