By: Carl Sullivan The success of Web site registration and targeted advertising at Tribune Co., Belo, and elsewhere has inspired other publishers to follow their lead. But building a registration system isn't an easy matter.
Tacoda Systems of New York was expected to announce today (June 16) a new turnkey audience registration system that can easily be installed at large papers or chains. Tacoda is already helping a number of chains monetize their audience data through ad targeting, so building a registration system was a logical next step, said CEO Dave Morgan.
Tacoda's registration system has already been bought by one large media group, which will begin installing it in two weeks on its newspaper and broadcast Web sites. Morgan couldn't yet identify the customer. The software costs from $75,000 to $250,000, plus ongoing support fees.
The McClatchy Co.'s Nando Media is also selling a registration solution, as are some e-commerce vendors, such as Clickshare Service Corp.
To date, most newspapers with Web registration have built their own systems, or have heavily customized registration systems from vendors. "Most of the solutions in the marketplace were not built to do content-side registration," Morgan said. "They are almost entirely commerce systems retrofitted to do registration." Some publishers have been reluctant to devote limited internal resources to building their own registration systems.
Tacoda claims its registration system is flexible, allowing publishers to easily modify the registration requirements from one property to another in a chain, or from one section to another within the same Web site.
The system features optional privacy controls that allow users to see what personal information a newspaper has collected about them. It also allows universal registration so that a reader who visits multiple sites owned by the same company won't have to reregister at each site.
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