CHICAGO, IL -- (Marketwire) -- 10/09/12 -- Local Offer Network (LON), a leading provider of e-commerce technology, data and services, today announced the launch of Catalyst, a platform that combines real-time personalization and content scoring to deliver the right coupons, offers, deals or other content to any person, anywhere online, from the very first visit.
LON also announced its proprietary Adaptive Response Model (ARM), a predictive algorithm that scores each content item for expected performance. ARM is based on years of LON historical data including millions of offers, tens of millions of consumer actions and real-time network activity. The ARM Score is employed by Catalyst, and can also be used independently to drive content selection.
Catalyst assembles data from multiple web-wide sources into an anonymous, composite user profile. It then draws the most relevant content for that user from LON's database of more than 100,000 offers, coupons and deals at any given time. That content is then filtered for quality and yield using the ARM Score and served to the publisher for display on any site, app or email.
By being open to virtually any data source, content source, or display location, Catalyst breaks through the limitations of legacy targeting and personalization systems. The impact is clear: in extensive testing, Catalyst has driven purchase conversion 138% higher than a control cell without Catalyst.
"It's well-known that when faced with a flood of choices, consumers tune out and make no choice at all," said Dan Hess, CEO and co-founder of Local Offer Network. "Catalyst creates an up-to-the-minute shortlist of shopping content for each user -- and when that happens, both consumers and publishers win."
"The industry has been talking for some time about personalizing curated content on the Web, including coupons, events, deals and other content," said Peter Krasilovsky, vice president and program director, BIA/Kelsey. "Until now, no one has done it. The new effort by Local Offer Network and its Catalyst platform should unleash all kinds of new opportunities, particularly in local e-commerce."
Catalyst can be implemented with as little as one line of code, so publishers can deliver superior user experience and grow revenue with minimal resources. For broad coverage of composite user profiles, Catalyst leverages data from several high-quality sources such as MasterCard Audiences, which allows for more precise modeling based on aggregate consumer spending behavior.
"Enabling relevance while still ensuring privacy protection is the grail of digital marketing, and the focus of the proprietary methodology within the MasterCard Audiences product," said Susan Grossman, senior vice president and group head of Media Solutions at MasterCard Advisors. "LON's Catalyst platform is a breakthrough step toward the same goal."
"Predicting overall audience response or personal relevance are best practices in content selection," noted Dr. Pete Fader, professor of marketing at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and co-director of the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative. "By combining both methods, Catalyst takes a major step forward in the art and science of interactive marketing."
For more information on implementing Catalyst as a publisher, or participating as a provider of shopping content or audience data, please visit http://localoffernetwork.com/about/contact.html or email catalyst@localoffernetwork.com. Consumers may choose to opt out of personalization via Catalyst at any time by selecting the "Opt Out" option at http://localoffernetwork.com/index.php/privacy-policy.html.
About Local Offer Network
Local Offer Network (LON) proprietary data, algorithms and technology deliver the right commerce-related content to any consumer, anywhere online, from the very first visit. LON products and services include Catalyst, a personalization and curation platform that uses content and data from any source in real time; a web-wide distribution network that allows publishers to efficiently generate revenue from a massive feed of shopping content; VoucherPro, a commerce platform that enables the creation and promotion of prepaid offers; and Dealradar.com, a one-stop shopping resource for consumers in 190 markets in four countries.
