In 2002, page views on Philip Kaplan’s infamous FuckedCompany website were going through the roof - and he needed an advertising platform to monetize those visitors. He couldn’t find the self-service product that he needed, so he built his own with co-founder Gidon Wise.
That ad platform was eventually spun out of FC and turned into Adbrite. Today, it’’s the 11th largest ad network in the U.S. with 61.5 million unique visitors across represented sites, according to Comscore’s September report (advertising.com, with 146 million unique visitors, is the largest according to Comscore, although they do not rank Google Adsense).
Adbrite first started taking advertising for sites other than FC in 2003, and they raised $4 million in venture capital from Sequoia in September 2004 (Mark Kvamme joined the Adbrite board of directors). In February 2006, Adbrite raised another $8 million from Sequoia and Artis Capital, and Philip Kaplan replaced himself as CEO, bringing in Shopping.com veteran Iggy Fanlo to run the show.
Today Adbrite is one of the largest ad networks, with over 28,000 sites generating 750 million daily page views. 400 new publishers join the network each day. Adbrite keeps 30% of gross revenue generated, passing the remainder on to the publisher.
Adbrite 2.0
Until today, advertisers could only purchase simple text ads on the network, choosing specific sites to advertise on, or based on keywords appearing on pages within the network.
The new product, Adbrite 2.0, goes far beyond that. In addition to text ads, advertisers can purchase banner and other graphical ads as well as “interstitials” which take over an entire page when a visitor first comes to a website.
Advertisers can also target ads beyond keywords and specific publishers. Adbrite determines demographic data for visitors to network publishers via a cookie and reverse IP lookup. They grab U.S. census data based on the zip code of the visitor, which gives them data on ethnicity and income level. Adbrite also looks at Comscore data for each site that user visits, which gives them reasonalby good age and gender data. Once a user visits enough sites, Adbrite has a very good idea of the age, gender, ethnicity and income level of that particular user. Advertisers can then choose to target their ads to certain users. In the future, Adbrite says they will be able to track even more information on a user in the future - such as if they are a new parent, or looking for a car - based on the sites they visit.
All of this detailed user tracking allows Adbrite to charge more for ads, and pass that on to publishers, Philip Kaplan told me on a phone call earlier today.
There are new tools to help publishers, too. A key feature they have launched is the ability to allow publishers to stay with their current network, and change to Adbrite ads only if they’ll make more from those ads. So a publisher can show Google ads most of the time, and Adbrite will switch their own ads in only if they’ve sold inventory that pay over a publisher-set CPM level.
“They grab U.S. census data based on the zip code of the visitor, which gives them data on ethnicity and income level.”.
So they are targetting based on zip code (from the reverse IP lookup) and census data…that does not sound too impressive or accurate? Am I missing something here?
SOUNDS LIKE BULLSHIT TO ME
Sweet I love ads!
“They grab U.S. census data based on the zip code of the visitor, which gives them data on ethnicity and income level.”.
Its very accurate and all the big sites do data mining using that kind of data. Its bigger in the offline world still. All the junk mail you get in your mailbox is set to you because someone looked up your postal code and found that you have a X probability of needing product abc.
Looks pretty slick to me. Mike you didn’t comment much on what you thought of the new platform.
From the same article…
“Today, [AdBrite is] the 11th largest ad network in the U.S. with 61.5 million unique visitors across represented sites….”
“Today Adbrite is one of the largest ad networks, with over 28,000 sites generating 750 million daily page views.”
61.5 unique visitors generating 750 million page views on 28,000 sites.
Don’t mind my exaggeration, but I don’t like the sound of “interstitials.” Almost sounds like it would be high-jacking the website and making the website its own entity. Sort of like HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
It’s not all new Mike. AdBrite has been selling interstitials for months. I’m not sure of the launch date, but it was a while ago. A Google search for “AdBrite Interstitial” comes up with 128,000 hits including several webmaster type forums discussing them.
Doesn’t seem too impressive. I mean, sure they added DOM and AJAX here and there but nothing revolutionary.
I do, however, like the feature that allows AdBrite to switch over with Google Ads when AdBrite brings in more money. I am not sure how they determine the keyword value since its actual value is only known to Google.
Jawad (Shuzak)
Thank god - a post where noone can whine, ‘but how are they gonna monetize it’…
61.5 unique visitors generating 750 million page views on 28,000 sites.hmm quite impressive.maybe i should go for adbrite later on…
Michael, you had better hope that posting this article does not begin to attract the people who frequent to comment section on F#$%edCompany.com.
I stopped visiting that site after I realized that the commenters were some of the most vile, obscene and juvenile people I’ve seen on the web to date. Kaplan did nothing to discourage the gutter-mouthed, peurile antics of his “guests”.
AdBrite was always good. even when 1.0
but, why did they name the company FuckedCompany?
anyone with its history?
Seems to be having a very strong business model.
Google Logs,
FC was like a dot bomb website where Philip, aka pud, would post a rumor or fact about a certain company that was nearing the end of its ropes. People would comment on it and so on. It became one of the places to go back when the sky was falling to see if your company was f’d or not. It’s kinda the inverse of what Techcrunch is today..if you make it to TC you are likely all good, if you made in on FC well, usually, it meant you were f’d.
http://www.fuckedcompany.com
To me, the real question in “bang for the buck.”
More specifically, Google Adsense vs. AdBrite.
Alought both companies have thier “click fraud” demons, it was my experience that it was significantly more pronounced with AdBrite. (I hope they’ve added measures to attenuate / minimize this plague.)
With that said, bear in mind that this is only “one data point” and I’m sure that there are many people have had a profitable experience with them. (I acknowledge that I have no “direct proof” of what I’m suggesting, but after spending a little money, having the majority of hits coming from Vietnam, etc., and getting very little in return - as compared to when I used Google Adsense - I’ve kinda formed my own assumptions.)
Oh, it’s already too late, kids. Adbrite is closely monitored by the FC crowd, who no congregate on a spinoff site called FFC:
http://www.whofailedtoday.com/.....?id=134107
Sucks to be you.
The problem with Adbrite is that half of the webmasters have obviously signed up, and then left. I have tried numerous times to buy ads — but responses are never received. I gave up on them months ago.
J
unprofessional title
Aren’t “interstitials” the kiss of death? I’ll never use one (advertise with) or allow them on my space. Anyone else agree?
The one good thing about the web that is also the bad thing is the variety available. It is overwhelming when there are so many good options to choose from. AdBrite sounds like another excellent option.
I thought I’d give them a try since I’ve been looking for a self-serve banner service for my site. 24 hours after signing up I now have over 3 pages of spam ads from Russian brides to mortgage refi waiting to be approved.
I shouldn’t have left the default 1 day option and price (I was just playing and applying for the banner beta), but I’m glad for it since it really shows what kind of trash trolls that service.