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Tom Foremski

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February 5th, 2007
FAST AdMomentum offers web publishers their own ad networkPosted by Tom Foremski @ 10:48 am Categories: Enterprise IT, Media/Blogging, New Rules, Disruptive

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FAST Search and Transfer, the European based search giant, today announced software that allows online publishers to serve contextual ads to their readers.
The FAST AdMomentum software could increase ad revenues by more than 200 per cent for some publishers, compared with large advertising networks such as Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network.
This is a software package installed in a publisher's data center. FAST says that it could also be used by a third party to offer a ready made online contextual advertising network that could be used to service many smaller online publishers such as blog networks. This means it could be used to compete with up and coming advertising networks such as FM Advertising, and AdBrite.
Publishers collect between 30 per cent to 70 per cent of the revenues that their advertising network partners receive–an amount that varies according to each deal. Google doesn't disclose the revenue split.
With AdMomentum, large publishers can establish their own advertising networks that support contextual ads, and also offer a wide variety of other types of advertising revenue such as impressions, pay per click, and also auctions.
Advertisers have a self-service interface and the software API is compatible with current advertisement tracking tools.
More than a dozen large publishers around the world have been beta testing the software.
Perry Solomon, VP of strategic market development at FAST, said: "AdMomentum can be used to target ads to specific groups of people. One of our customers in Norway is using it to target ads to people on a street by street basis."
"This is a way for publishers to capture the share of the revenues that have been going to the advertising networks," he added. "The publishers already have advertisers, and they have the content, they don't need the advertising networks. We can provide them with a revenue engine."
Nearly one-half of Google's revenues in the past, have come from its AdSense network, which serves advertising on sites owned by online publishers. Large publishers such as New York Times, Knight-Ridder, and Time-Warner use AdSense.
Foremski's Take: This is potentially a game changing product and strategy. It brings back the advertiser relationship to the publisher–where it belongs.
For example, I've always wondered why the New York Times would run AdSense on its online front page, and the AdSense ads carry a text link at the bottom "advertise on this site." That says to everyone "we have no clue how to monetise this space and have handed over the customer relationship to a third party." That is suicide in today's world.
The advertising networks take a huge cut considering that they establish self-service advertising interfaces and run a bunch of servers and some software. Well, now the publishers can now do the same and cut out the middleman.
I can also see AdMomentum being used by local newspapers to essentially become the "AdSense" for their regions. They could sign up smaller online publishers within their local towns and neighborhoods and provide a much better targeted service to businesses and residents.
This could also apply to a large tech publisher such as CNET (the publisher of ZDNet) it could sign up smaller tech publishers to its ad network and serve up targetted ads that don't include potato chips on chip stories.
Additional Info:
FAST is headquartered in Norway and is publicly traded under the ticker symbol 'FAST' on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The FAST Group operates globally with presence in Europe, the United States, Asia, Australia, the Americas, and the Middle East. For further information about FAST, please visit http://www.fastsearch.com/.


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Tom Foremski reports on the business and culture of Silicon Valley and beyond. And also blogs at SiliconValleyWatcher.com


Google Tests 'Gadget Ads'
by Tameka Kee, Friday, May 4, 2007 6:00 AM ET
GOOGLE HAS BEGUN BETA-TESTING "GADGET Ads"--interactive applications that advertisers can embed into Web pages, which will add a rich media solution to the search giant's suite of products.
Although Google executives revealed the beta during a marketing summit for the auto industry, the Gadget Ads will be available to all ad categories by this summer's planned launch.
Bloggers around the Web, dubbing them "Google Gadgets," have written about these ad units, a version of which are available for use with the new personalized iGoogle interface.
Like widgets, the HTML-based applications offer advertisers the option to add flash, video, real-time feed, and transaction functionality to typically static display ads.
"But they don't have to be complex," said Zal Bilimoria, product marketing manager, Google. "Anyone who can build a Web site can have a Gadget Ad."
Advertisers will incur no serving or hosting costs to run Gadget Ads, which come in standard IAB ad formats. The ads will be placed through the existing auction system, allowing marketers the option of bidding by publisher's site or content theme. With either CPC or CPM pricing, Gadget Ads can be integrated into an existing AdSense budget.
As rich media technology becomes more readily available, advertisers are increasingly turning to widget-like applications for solutions that don't require users to actively search for content or click through to a landing page.
To support these changes, Google has developed specific "interaction reporting" tools as part of its Google Analytics performance feedback services.
Marketers using Gadget Ads will be able to determine which features users are clicking on the most--whether a 'how-to video,' a 'savings calculator,' or a live feed--and then edit them accordingly. As "user engagement" evolves into a key accountability metric for measuring digital ad strategies, it will also become increasingly important for advertisers to track these statistics.
Tameka Kee can be reached at tameka@mediapost.com

AOL Launches Private-Label AOL-Only Search Product
by Laurie Petersen, Monday, Apr 9, 2007 6:00 AM ET
AOL TODAY LAUNCHES AOL SEARCH Marketplace, a private-label version of Google AdWords search allowing advertisers to place search ads only within the AOL network.
This marks the first time Google has allowed one of its partners to offer such a service. It is an expansion of a five-year strategic relationship between Google and AOL struck in December 2005 in which Google powered the contextual search ads found on the AOL service.
AOL Search Marketplace is designed to enhance the efforts of display advertisers on the AOL service, allowing it to offer deeper services and strengthen relationships with these advertisers, said Dariusz Pacsuski, vice president of search products for AOL Platforms. It has been tested with about 30 advertisers over the past five months."
"We have found that there is a significant impact when search and display campaigns are coordinated," said Mike Kelly, president of AOL Media Networks.
The service also gives AOL a better shot at getting some of the search advertising dollars that have gone to Google. AOL restructured to put a focus on a free ad-supported service last year, and has made online ad sales a top priority. AOL ad sales rose to nearly $2 billion in fourth-quarter 2006, up 49% over the previous year for the period.
"This brings what you can classify as a really strong second-tier player to the table," said Stephen Chiles, COO of search marketing agency Reprise Media. "Anytime you can get diversity beyond the big three, that's certainly a positive."
"You can certainly hope that there will potentially be less spam since it's a syndicated Google," added Chiles, a former AOL executive.
Still, the service can only be viewed as a supplemental play because of the AOL volume, he said. According to comScore Media Metrix, AOL has 111 million monthly unique visitors, and search drew 311 million queries in February. Its latest public filing pegged the number of paying AOL domestic subscribers at 13.18 million.
AOL also announced two other search enhancements launching today. AOL Local Search is now in beta incorporating technology from MapQuest. It combines information from AOL's CityGuide with geotargeted advertising to make it easy to find a location and get reviews of local businesses, restaurants and more.
A new AOL Shopping and Commerce Search is resulting from a partnership with PriceGrabber.com to provide a comparison shopping search experience.
Laurie Petersen is executive editor of MediaPost. Email her at laurie@mediapost.com


The Widget Way to Wealth
by Mark Walsh, May 2007 issue
eBay has long touted an affiliate program that rewards smaller sites for sending traffic to the online marketplace. Now start-up AuctionAds promises to help Web publishers earn more from eBay via a downloaded widget that shows auction ads related to content on their sites.
When someone clicks on an AuctionAds listing and then makes a transaction or registers on eBay, a site gets paid. By aggregating eBay traffic from individual sites, AuctionAds says it helps most publishers make more than they could through eBay's own keyword ad tool, run by Commission Junction.
After launching at the beginning of March, more than 7,000 sites have already adopted the AuctionAds widget. "What we wanted to create was something as easy to set up as [Google] AdSense, but leverage the high payout that eBay offers," says Jeremy Schoemaker, co-founder of AuctionAds, majority-owned by his ShoeMoney Media.
The more traffic a site drives to eBay, the more it can earn - up to 65 percent on sales and $22 for each new user registration. So far, AuctionAds is passing along 100 percent of the eBay fees it collects, though Schoemaker says eventually it will take a percentage while still paying sites at least as much as they'd make as direct partners.
So how does eBay view the affiliate interloper? After all, the online giant unveiled its own keyword-based contextual ad program last year that it called AdContext. Schoemaker says the company has embraced AuctionAds as a creative new use of the eBay API. "We've been invited to speak at every event they have now," he ads, noting that his start-up is already close to cracking eBay's top 10 affiliates.