Arctic15 finalist Kiosked is rapidly gaining ground with its in-content online sales platform. The startup has now partnered with Suomi24, Finland’s largest web community, to provide interactive online marketplaces (kiosks) to the community’s 2700 discussion forums and 1.3 million unique weekly visitors.
The kiosks basically turn Suomi24 into a huge marketplace. Kiosked’s Web Wide Shop platform has an automated self-provisioning interface that enables advertisers to place their products and services in a consumer relevant context. In other words, advertisers will be able to target an audience that is quite likely already thinking about purchasing their product.
”We wanted to offer companies an easy and efficient way to directly promote and sell their products and services where their consumers are already sharing information with each other; and making shopping decisions”, says Jarno Alastalo, Director of Suomi24.
Kiosked claims that the CTR (click-through-rate) of its service is 5-25 times better than that of comparable banner advertising.
”One of Kiosked’s main goals is to help brands and merchants to reach online consumers in a way that serves the consumer. 99% of people don’t see online banner ads and most people find them annoying. We want to turn online advertising into a service, which serves advertisers, merchants, and consumers alike”, says Kiosked’s CEO and Co-founder Micke Paqvalén.
Suomi24 is among the very first services to launch Kiosked’s platform. A quick test of the kiosks at Suomi24 tells us that the service still suffers somewhat from a lack of advertisers, but it will be interesting to see how the platform works once it has gained some momentum at such a large-scale venue.
