Advertisers Can Now Target You Based On The Comments You Leave On Websites

Advertisers have lots of clever ways to use consumers' online browsing behavior to target digital advertising at them. Now they are going to be able to mine the comments people leave on websites in order to serve them contextual ads, based on the stuff they have been talking about and other people's comments they have been voting on.

Disqus, a blog comment hosting service used by sites such as The Atlantic, Rolling Stone and ABC News, is rolling out advertising in the UK and US, Adweek reports.

The San Francisco-based company is partnering WPP's programmatic ad platform Xaxis to let brands place ads against Disqus comments. The ads, which will be labeled as "sponsored," will be shown at the top of comment threads. They can feature text, images, video and can be discussed to a particular audience, the topic being discussed, or both.

Publishers, advertisers, and Disqus will not receive any personally identifiable information about the users brands are targeting. Instead Disqus will create anonymous profiles, with its general manager of advertising David Fleck telling Adweek: "We have the largest and deepest audience profiles on the web."

From the brand perspective, comment threads will be closely monitored to ensure ads are not delivered against any topics deemed "unsafe."

Disqus would not confirm to Adweek which publishers will be the first to carry the ads.

On its website Disqus claims to power 1 billion unique users, 20 million comments and 80 million comment votes per month.