Ad network strives to make coupons more meaningful

But a small Silicon Valley company is striving to improve coupons' aim with a new online distribution network based on a contextual concept that helped turn Google Inc. into the Internet's most popular--and profitable--advertising vehicle.

After several weeks of tests, Mountain View-based Coupons Inc. plans to unveil its "Brandcaster" system Monday.

Finding online coupons now typically requires consumers to make a special trip to Coupons Inc.'s site, coupons.com, or similar destinations like smartsouce.com, ppgazette.com and coolsavings.com.

If Brandcaster works, Web surfers should start seeing more offers to print out coupons for products that have a contextual connection to a topic that piqued a reader's interest in the first place. For instance, someone looking at a Web page about healthy food might be offered a coupon for organic milk.

It's the same idea behind the text-based ad links that Google displays alongside search results and other information at hundreds of thousands of Web sites.

Coupons Inc. even recruited one of Google's advertising masterminds to become an adviser for the Brandcaster system.

Gokul Rajaram, who left Google late last year, said he wanted to help out because he views Brandcaster as a logical extension of Google's "AdSense"--a system he helped launch in 2003 to distribute relevant advertising links to other Web sites.

Since then, AdSense has attracted more than $15 billion in advertising revenue.

Coupons are "one of the big bastions" of advertising that still hasn't made a significant move to the Internet, Rajaram said. "I think this is can drive large amounts (of coupons) online."