We are currently working with more than 50 major brands who are using our social targeting platform. In almost all cases, we are compared to other vendors that provide standard retargeting. We’ve been able to not only provide a lift in performance over standard retargeting but we’ve been able to also build more scalable campaigns that help marketers reach NEW consumers – something that standard retargeting cannot do.

We have driven great success across a number of different verticals. Retail and fashion brands, as you mention, tend to have very tribal customer bases. We’ve also driven tremendous ROI in the telecom and retail categories, along with others. CPG is a new vertical for us. Because the brand affinity for CPG brands isn’t always very tribal in nature, we try to identify those brands that have audiences that shares very tribal interests and lifestyles. For example, we’ve worked very successfully for several CPG companies that target stay-at-home moms – a group of consumers that are VERY tribal in nature. We will continue to explore how we can roll out the value of social targeting across CPG brands.

At this time, we have not considered partnerships with creative companies to integrate social endorsement of a product or service. Based on concerns around the use of personally identifiable information (PII), we’ve decided to focus more on implied word of mouth and endorsement, as opposed to explicit endorsement.

If I can help answer any other questions you have about our technology, please don’t hesitate to ask.

It would also be great to hear which product categories are showing the strongest results in social targeting. I assume that fashion brands and entertainment advertisers would see the best results, since people are often connected to others who share similiar "tastes". I'd also think that financial brands would see success, based on the assumption that people tend to affiliate with others of the same socio-economic status.

I would assume that social targeting is less effective for CPG products. I don't know the favorite mustard brand of any of my friends, and I don't think I'd be more likely to respond to a French's mustard ad just because one of my friends click on the banner.

I'd also be curious if Media6Degrees has considered partnerships with creative providers that would be able to incorporate a friend's endorsement into the ad unit itself.