More Than 50 Online Publishers Install Ambiance, Sophia's Ambient Ecommerce Platform, Within The First Quarter Of Availability

SlashGear, Neowin and eTeknix among the first online publications to install ‘AmbianceTM’, displaying product recommendations from one of the world’s largest online retailers

Sophia, the pioneer and market leader in ambient ecommerce, recently announces that more than 50 online publishers, including SlashGear, Neowin and eTeknix, have installed Sophia’s Ambiance platform within the first quarter of availability.

Ambiance is a fully-automated, scalable, cloud-based solution that dynamically identifies and showcases relevant products, based on what the consumer is viewing in real time. Pioneered by a team of AI experts, Ambiance minimizes consumer “blindness” to irrelevant online advertising. It uses sophisticated contextually-aware content analytics to marry both sides of the ecommerce equation – enabling consumers to discover relevant products in real-time, and publishers and retailers to substantially increase revenues. Ambiance is already delivering click-through rates up to 50 times greater than current industry standards.

Already showcasing products from one of the world’s largest global online retailers, Ambiance is exciting publishers with its performance.

“Sophia’s Ambiance platform is a landmark moment for publishers. We are in the age of personalisation yet content that sits alongside editorial is often anything but. The result is low click-through rates and obtrusive ads that can compromise the look and feel of a page’s layout,” says Ewdison Then, co-founder, SlashGear. “With Sophia, this has all changed. Ambiance fits in seamlessly with SlashGear’s design, took minutes to install and delights consumers by the relevancy of the products showcased.”

“When the Sophia team showed us what Ambiance was capable of, we immediately saw its potential from a commercial perspective,” says Steve Parker, co-founder, Neowin. “Our readers are interested in the hottest tech available on the market and so the ability to ensure we’re able to offer up contextually relevant recommendations based on what they are reading at that moment in time, rather than what they searched for yesterday, is hugely beneficial. As readers are able to quickly access additional info about the products they’re reading about, we have seen substantially higher click-through rates, way beyond those that traditional online advertising methods are capable of delivering.”

“As a publisher and editor it’s important for me to be delivering the most appropriate and relevant content to my audience, whether that’s through my articles or the ads being shown on my site,” says Andy Ruffell, co-founder and publisher of eTeknix. “I detest seeing low-quality, irrelevant ads that appear via the exchanges, which have no benefit to my audience. When I installed Ambiance, my editorial staff and I were more than pleased to see relevant product images and information being shown to my users. As a result, my click-through rates improved 2,300 percent – the stats speak for themselves.”

“Online publishers have been going through a very challenging time in recent years, with underperforming and often intrusive approaches to advertising creating ‘ad blindness’ among users,” says Dr. David Patterson, CEO of Sophia. “Ambiance solves this problem by serving up recommendations that are contextually relevant to what they are reading at that moment in time without compromising a user’s privacy.”

“The results speak for themselves and the fact that so many online publications have installed Ambiance within the first quarter of its availability is testimony to this and the product’s scalability. We have received a fantastic level of interest from major publishers and retailers alike across sectors such as technology, health & beauty, automotive and fashion since launching and we look forward to announcing additional customers in the very near future.”

About Sophia
Sophia is the innovation leader in ambient ecommerce. It is a venture backed company who specializes in automatically extracting precise meaning from content and then accurately relating that to products that consumers want. Sophia is headquartered in San Francisco, Calif. with offices in Belfast, N. Ireland and St. Petersburg, Russia. For more information, visit http://www.discoversophia.com.