Reebonz and aSpecial Media in IDA-supported project

• 12mth project to refine how online behavior is tracked, gets IDA grant
• Collaboration has the potential to assist other online retailers too

 
SINGAPOREAN-based data analytics startup aSpecial Media said it will be working with luxury goods online retailer Reebonz on a project to refine the way behaviour is tracked and analysed as people access online content.
 
The project has been given a grant by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and will be conducted over a 12-month period, which began in January, aSpecial Media said in a statement.
 
It did not disclose the size of the grant.
 
“aSpecial Media tracks people’s interests in real-time. Our collaboration project aims to help us refine our understanding of what people need and determine the point in time when they are most active in seeking it,” said Reebonz chief technology officer Torres Oey.
 
aSpecial Media tracks people’s interests in real-time by monitoring their interaction with web-based content. It currently has 34 million interest profiles in its database.
 
All monitoring is done on sites of partners, who must have obtained permission from their readers for this, the company said.
 
Its partners include media organisations, popular bloggers, and niche publishers with small but influential audiences, it added.
 
“Our company has long been refining ways to find out what people are really interested in,” said aSpecial Media executive chairman Paul Jansen.
 
“We concluded that the only real way to see what people are keen on is to analyse what they read – and not just what the hosts of content say people are reading.
 
“We had to find ways to analyse all the content ourselves and then make interpretations based on this true understanding of what the content is,” he added.
 
Jansen said this made a great deal of difference when deciding what to recommend to this reader, transforming what could have been an unwelcome intrusion into appreciated information.
 
aSpecial Media chief executive Christopher Yeo said that the collaboration with Reebonz has the potential to assist other players in the online retail market as well, and make them competitive with global platforms.
 
“The proportion of buyers to casual browsers or registered users is typically very low, usually in the single digit percentage, for many online retailers.
 
“Armed with better insights on these users, online retailers would be able to increase average revenue per user through better product recommendations by knowing the real-time interests of users through their reading behavior,” he added.
 
The Reebonz-aSpecial Media project will see aSpecial Media extracting and refreshing information on digital users’ interests as they read content on the Internet.
 
Those who fit the interest profile of a potential customer of Reebonz will then be reached through various means to acquaint them with the services of the company.
 
Additionally, this information will also be used to enrich the database of existing clients of Reebonz. The company will then be able to service these customers even better with tailored offerings, aSpecial Media said in its statement.
 
Yeo said that the market for the refined tools generated through the collaboration is predicted to be in the region of US$1 billion by 2018.
 
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