Jared Kopf thinks that ad networks should be more like social networks. A member of the PayPal mafia (he also helped start Slide), Kopf is now CEO of Adroll, a social ad network that launched in private beta last week. (The first 100 TechCrunch readers to register and type in the promo code “Crunchroll” will get a beta invite).
The last thing the Web needs is another ad network, but Adroll is at least trying something new. It lets niche publishers self-organize into communities of interest so as to have a better shot at attracting advertisers. For instance, in the “Surfing Ad Community,” there are currently eight surf sites that collectively attract an audience of half-a-million per month. There is also an “Alt Music Community” of music blogs. Any publisher can create their own community or ask to join an existing one. Kopf explains this to me in an e-mail:
(Communities can be a) Open, b) Members Can Invite, and c) Only Leader Can Invite)
This actually allows publishers to form communities that are exclusive, or semi-exclusive. So you could form the TechCrunch Ad Community that is made up of smaller tech-focused blogs that you rep. Or a community of “Breaking News Sites.” Sites can join by “friending” you…and you approve (or deny) their admission.
The big point of differentiation for us is that we . . . use a “social-networking”-style matching system to enable publishers to create their own networks, and help publishers to sell more, at higher CPMs by working together.
Well, that’s the idea. You create your own adroll, just like a blogger would create a blogroll with other related blogs. Except that advertisers can buy ads across that blogroll. They can also buy ads across a tagroll. When publishers set up their profiles they choose tags to describe their site, like “surf,” “celebrities,” or “web 2.0.” And advertisers can buy those tags. Advertisers also have their own profiles, with their own tags. So publishers interested in attracting a certain advertiser need only look at its tags, add them to their own profile, and hope for a match. Thus, the tagrolls could end up being so easy to game as to render them useless.
The bigger question for Adroll is whether advertisers will bite at all. Do they actually want to reach the Long Tail of surfing sites, or just stick with the most popular ones they already can get through other ad networks? The bigger the adroll, the more appealing it will be to advertisers. But become too big and generic, and the communities lose their targeting advantage. Also, most advertisers are used to spraying ads at certain demographics, but Adroll communities are organized by interests. That could be another problem.
The bulk of advertising still goes to the top handful of sites on the Web. So anything that gives niche sites more of a fighting chance is worth trying. Adroll is offering them a new way to band together. Whether advertisers will care depends on how cool the publishers can come across. The same as any other social network.
Screenshots:
I tip my toupee at them for trying.
I wonder how many advertisers see value in this over placement targeting (the old site targeting) from Google Adsense?
For publishers this is certainly something to try, especially with the idea of flocking together to attract higher CPMs.
yet another social network
This sounds like the (somehow) dead Feedburner Networks
Not new. See Active Athlete’s strategy; aggregate people around a passion and put ads in front of them.
They must have hired the designer from Flickr; their colors and layout are wayyy too similar.
Might be a good match for Lookery — Lookery is telling websites what their demographics look like, based on matching the browsing users against social networking websites.
WOW!
it’s been a while since I saw rundschrift in a logo.
This is a very cool concept.
It actually looks like they do collect demographic info for advertisers, so it would seem they have plans to address that issue.
As someone in the industry, this seems like a great idea. I’ll be eagerly waiting to see how this develops.
Sounds interesting. Signed up. This may be ‘yet another social network’ but that’s pretty much the staple diet for startups these days, and anything that adds the human touch to the usually systematic and inpersonal process of advertising is a winner in my book.
If only they’d send the bloody email confirmation and let me start playing with it.
As someone that writes on a pretty niche subject (tees and hoodies) this could work pretty well for me, but obviously it’s going to need a large user base for there to be any point in switching from my usual advertising channels.
Paypal MAFIA ????? hahah that was a good one !!
This won’t work! I have spoken!
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
Social networks bring people together, and this is exactly what the advertising industry needs. It seems so obvious! Great idea and smart site.
OMFG, It’s like beacon, but it’s not in FB?
How can that be. These guys are just simply witty as one can possibly get.
E pluribus Unum. Watch out ad-networks, if these tools are easy for advertisers and publishers to use, this company is going to roll up your markets
we’ve been toying with the idea of making a scuba vertical ad network. seemed tricky, now seems easy. excellent!
I got a chance to play with Adroll before they launched into beta and I was pretty impressed with it.
I wrote up my impressions here: http://www.alwa...o-private-beta/
Hey everybody – we’re psyched too.
We’re going to open a few more beta invites later this week for those of you that aren’t going to make it into the first TC 100 invites. Stay tuned here.
Also, invitations from within Adroll.com work, so once you’re approved, members can invite 3 other relevant publishers into your ad communities… or just to join (if you’re friendly) without connecting.
@10 (me) “If only they’d send the bloody email confirmation and let me start playing with it.”
I take that back, I just got in and it’s looking pretty nice.
@19 (Jared) Good luck with it. I might give it a mention over at SE.
Congratulations AdRollers!
I think this is an awesome idea. Big advertisers want to get in front of large numbers of people with the same interests or in the same demographic. And they pay a significant premium for that.
This lets smaller sites access that market. I can’t see any reason why I wouldn’t use it!
You can make a lot of money on the mid to long-tail but you can’t make any money in the mid or longtail. In other words, another internet pyramid scheme.
As an advertiser having audiences to choose by interest oder demographics is nothing new.
The good idea about it is the transparency for publisher and advertiser, which reminds me a lot of the Right Media model.
This sounds like a great idea.