AdForce / Imgis  

Server List: See Stephen Martin's Hosts File List (Adforce / Imgis Group)

About AdForce:  www.adforce.com  -  www.imgis.com (Imgis redirects to Adforce)

Using cookies and clickstream data, AdForce is "Enabling online publishers and ad agencies to exploit the full potential of the Internet for interactive marketing." In combination with a service called TrackForce™, AdForce clients can "Track patterns as the consumer moves from ad banner click-through to a transaction, then exits the promotional site."

Despite making alot of noise in it's Privacy Policy about how concerned it is with user privacy, AdForce will attempt to link it's "anonymous, aggregate database" with personally identifiable profiles when possible (see the News and Links section below for it's outrageous agreement with Geocities). When AdForce was acquired by CMGI in January, 2000, it became yet another of their majority-owned companies with large user databases. Engage, AltaVista, and yesmail.com are others. Though I haven't seen anything in print about these databases being merged... come on.

Targeting: "You can target campaigns using a wide range of criteria including domain/SIC code, content area, keywords, geography, and site-provided data. AdForce Targeting is an option that leverages AdForce's unique relationship with Metromail and provides targeting using detailed consumer demographic data."

Reporting: "AdForce's proprietary data-base architecture ensures that every ad impression and click-through is counted accurately, whether the ad is delivered from the user's browser cache, a service provider's cache, or direct from the AdForce data center."

Transactions: "Beyond click-throughs, AdForce Beacons track the activity of prospects who act on an ad - such as filling out a survey or making a purchase - and makes this transaction data available along with other campaign report information. Your customers can measure the effectiveness of their advertising according to sales or any other specific campaign objective, and go beyond branding to true one-to-one marketing."

On March 27, 2000, AdForce announced AdForce Everywhere, it's "new media advertising program to deliver targeted advertising messages to new digital platforms." AdForce EveryWhere "...is a new media advertising program to deliver targeted, interactive advertising messages to new digital platforms beyond the PC, including wireless devices, set-top boxes, cell phones, kiosks, point-of-sale devices, consumer electronic devices and interactive television."

On August 15, 2000, AdForce announced it's new bulk email service, AdForce Mail, that utilizes services from both ClickAction and RadicalMail. "AdForce Mail complements AdForce's leading ad management and delivery services by enabling the delivery of highly targeted content and offers via email, and by helping companies develop targeted text, HTML, rich media and viral marketing email campaigns quickly and easily." (Ref: "AdForce Expands Marketing Services With Clickaction's Targeted, Permission-Based Email Service" www.adforce.com/home/press20000815.html)

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Links & News  

AdForce / Imgis Agreement With Geocities:  Non-confidential portions of the agreement can be viewed in full at techdeals.findlaw.com/agreements/geocities/imgisadforceagree.html (Thanks go to XRay for the link). The following section (Exhibit C, on page 8 of 9 of published portions) is particularly disturbing:

AdForce+ is IMGIS' proprietary database targeting service, designed to provide one-to-one addressable on-line advertising. IMGIS has secured multi-year, exclusive data agreements with both Marketing Information Technologies, a leader in targeted print advertising, and Metromail, a $400 million, consumer demographic data compiler. These relationships position IMGIS to exclusively leverage the unique, one-to-one marketing capabilities of the Internet. Traditional consumer databases alone, however, do not provide the key to unlock the demographic information on the Internet because there is no mapping from terrestrial world data to the Internet. AdForce+ provides this map by linking on-line registration files and ISP login information to IMGIS' 3rd party demographic databases.

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Privacy Information  

Site Privacy Policy:  www.adforce.com/home/privacy

Includes statement that "AdForce will never share personally identifiable information (such as your name, address, and telephone) that you provide about yourself through our website without your express permission. Further, AdForce does not and will not store this personally identifiable information about you unless you specifically request that we do so."

AdForce is strategic partners with Engage (profiled separately on this website). "Some of our customers specifically request that we provide the non-personally identifiable information collected in connection with their campaigns to Engage Technologies (www.engage.com) to create interest profiles. No information is provided to Engage unless the customer has contracted with both AdForce and Engage to create such interest profiles."

Ad Delivery Privacy:  www.adforce.com/home/privacy/PrivacyPolicy.html and www.adforce.com/home/privacy/AdDeliveryPrivacy.html

Includes statement that "At no time during the ad delivery process do we collect any personally identifiable information, such as your name, street or email address, or phone number. In the course of serving ads, AdForce collects certain non-personally identifiable data by placing a 'cookie' (a small file containing a unique, randomly selected alphanumeric tag) on a consumer's computer hard drive."

"The non-personally identifiable information collected in connection with a cookie includes: IP Address of the machine (browser/proxy) connecting to AdForce, browser type (i.e., IE 3.x, etc.), operating system (i.e., Macintosh, PC, etc.), date and time a particular ad was served, advertisement tag (placed by a website on a web page to call up an ad)."

"This data allows us to measure and report information to our customers, such as the number of browsers who see an ad, the number of people who click on an ad, and how many times we delivered an ad. We may aggregate and use this data internally for statistical and reporting purposes."

Opt-Out Option: Opt-out cookie is available at www.adforce.com/home/privacy/OptOutOption.html

Privacy Contact: [email protected]

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Business Associates:  

Strategic Partners Include: ACTIVATE, Akamai, America Online, ClickAction, Digital Island, Engage Technologies, Inc., Euroserve Media GmbH, GotMarketing.com, Experian, InterVU Inc., iQ.COM, Keynote, Liberate Technologies, MetaTV, Millward Brown Interactive, OpenGrid, and TRUSTe.

Is it me or is there something really wrong with TRUSTe being strategic partners with a marketing conglomerate? AdForce states: "AdForce has initiated and co-authored an Advertising Affiliate Program with TRUSTe to promote consumer privacy protection as it relates to Internet ad serving. AdForce is also a Contributing Sponsor of TRUSTe and will appoint a representative to the TRUSTe Advisory Board."

Ad/Marketing Clients Include: 24/7 Media, Inc., @pos.com, Adsmart, agentGO.com, B2BWorks, Banner Brokers, Modem Media.Poppe Tyson, MusicVision, and Virtual Billboard Network.

Customers Include: www.4anything.com, ARTISTdirect, EntryPoint, FreeRealTime.com, LanguageForce, MapQuest.com, Netscape Netcenter, OneMediaPlace, Planetweb, PointCast, Set-Top.com, StockTalkLive.com, uBid.com, The Virtual Music Vault, Virtual Vegas, Wall Street Sports, and XDrive.

Last Reviewed: Sept 04-00

Quoted excerpts are © AdForce unless otherwise noted.

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