expertSEM

In all the hubbub about the on again, off again, benign, then hostile, then negotiated, etc. bid by Microsoft for Yahoo!, it seems my favorite little interactive media company that could has been left out in the cold… always a bridesmaid, never a bride; IAC Interactive. Right now, with a market cap of $5.35B, and shares hovering near 52 week low pending the outcome of some legal woes, it just might be a good buy for Microsoft to snap up this gem for one tenth what they will likely have to pay for Yahoo!

But the price tag isn’t the only thing, the market needs an underutilized resource to provide value for a merger. Here’s one that’s bothered me for a long time, Evite. When I buy media placements, such as those found on Evite, I want to target as much as possible. If I have a beer client (New Belgium, we’re available to help), I want to put ads on every Evite for a summer BBQ that mentions beer, or asks people to bring beer. Essentially it’d be like content targeting on steroids for display advertising. I have made inquiries, but this level of targeting is not available on Evite.

Consider what is available; this is a recent Evite I received (the PPC Handy Man does have a social life!) for a graduate school graduation party:

An unbiased, computer-esque reading of this Evite could inform an intelligent text reading software of a couple of key points: 30 year old host, birthday party, graduation party, master’s thesis, afternoon start time, and Denver.

Now, I may be biased since this is a friend, but all of this speaks more to showing beer ads than education, especially since Denver, for better or for worst, is officially the drunkest town in America… TAKE THAT, ANCHORAGE! All of these traits suggest to my marketing attuned brain that you could more easily sell that person’s guests some sort of adult beverage than a discounted Sylvan Learning Center package (the ad that’s there, presumably based on the “education” elements in the Evite).

So there we are, any reasonably sophisticated search technology provider could engineer a targeting system to take advantage of the assets of Evite, and I even think Microsoft might be able to pull it off as well (oh, slam!). Somebody call Steve Balmer, and let him know I work at a very reasonable .01% on deals over eight figures.