Spottt, which went into private beta at TechCrunch40, launches to the public today. The product is part of the Adbrite advertising network, but is being run as a separate brand.
It is a reincarnation of sorts of LinkExchange, an advertising network that launched in the mid nineties and was later acquired by Microsoft in 1998 for $265 million. LinkExchange co-founder Tony Hsieh (also the CEO of Zappos) is advising Adbrite on Spottt.
The basic idea is that you place the Spottt 125×125 ad unit on your site, above the fold (no adult content). They provide a simple embed code, or you can use your own ad serving software (we use OpenAds). For every two ad impressions that you serve, you’ll get one free ad somewhere on the network (you can see the ad unit here on TechCrunch, we’ve added it into the sponsor’s area to the right to test it), and it is also on CrunchBase.
That leaves Spottt with 50% of the ad inventory for itself. For the first year they’ll just place their own ads on sites. After a year they’ll add the extra inventory to Adbrite and let advertisers purchase it.
This isn’t for everyone, of course. Sites that can sell ads will want to do so to make the money. But Adbrite founder Philip Kaplan notes that there are millions of websites that cannot afford to advertise, and this gives them a way of doing so without paying. And even sites that have advertising units on their site may want to add this to get some inventory on other sites. “I think this is the coolest thing we’ve ever built,” he said.
Spottt is also providing real time statistics for users, including the number of ads you’ve shown, the number you’ve received (half of that) and the number of clicks on both ads you are showing and those you are receiving. Click on the image for a larger view of sample stats.
Spottt is run from Amazon’s EC2 web service, and advertising images are hosted on Akamai (Kaplan says he wants to be able to scale quickly in the event it grows anything like LinkExchange did back in the day). They are also working with Gigya to enable the placement of the ad unit on MySpace and other social networks. If ads aren’t accepted on any particular social network, he says, they’ll just run their house ads on that site.
If you’d like to sign up for the service, use the code “techcrunch” and get 1,000 free impressions to start. The first 1,000 registrations qualify.
cool idea!
Check out http://adgridwork.com as well…
so we can expect all the attendies of the TC40 will be featured here sooner rather than latter…
ok I’ll do the obligatory girlie response “ohhhh that dog is SOooo cute”
Adverting network area is hotting up again with new innovation is being done in field of creating inventory and for selling to advertisers. Google valuation with Ad words and adsense product is surely going to create more heat.
I will give it a try…
I’m going to throw a copy on TagSum and see what happens
mike - any thoughts on this vs. entrecard which appears to be popular in the moneymaking and seo blogging areas. same idea i believe in concept.
Who is the target market? GIRLS. LOL.
I think it’s a great idea. It is very useful to startups with minimum cash. Google is too expensive nowadays. I’m certainly giving it a try.
I agree with #2 above.
I’ve used http://www.adgridwork.com/ on some on my websites.
Spott is getting more publicity than other similar services out there!
it’s gonna bomb.
anyone who is a real business, can and will buy advertising.
then there’s everyone else - which are not really into business…if this is for them, they won’t use it. they won’t want to bother with the technicalities of installing it and cross promotion and what have you.
there’s adwords buyers, and no adwords buyers; there really is no middle ground - for something like this
Isn’t Entrecard doing the same thing?
Spottt is awfullly similar to Entrecard, although Entrecard is only for bloggers. IMO Entrecard is executed better because the credits you earn act like money, to buy ads on any blog you like (which, I beleive is somewhere in the area of 4000)
I wonder how Spottt is going to stop people from simply reloading their pages a million times to build up credits?
Excellent Idea!
I am almost sure TechCrunch is getting more then an ad exchange for putting that spottt ad on their site.
Also, I like how Entrecard doesn’t take any of the impressions for themself. When you pay credits to be on a blog like ProBlogger, your ad is on there for every page load for a solid 24 hrs. Spottt will probably bomb quick because, as lawrence pointed out, this is for the middle ground. If spottt did their research, they would know this middle ground is bloggers, and bloggers aren’t going to want this spammy junk on their site. They only want to interact with other bloggers with quality content.
From the looks of it, these sites look like a spin-off of the successful Entrecard. Entrecard has been on the web for just a few months and have already grown very successful. I like this system very much and these other ones listed at the top of this page really doesn’t seem to offer anything more, if not the very same features, than Entrecard.
We’ve used Entrecard since early December and found it to be just about the best way to generate traffic for blogs. Zero cost. Being 90 days old, EC already shows that they are geared for the long haul. Listening to feedback and really showing an interest in their users, they’ve already implemented quite a few changes. It’s my belief that they are poised to be a major player in not only the ‘blog’ network, but their business model could help usher in a change in advertising in general. I have no doubts that some of these great features Spottt has, EC will have in some form or another/better.
isn’t spottt an advertiser on this site? wheres the disclosure…
I’m evaluating them on my blog (http://vacuous.blahhger.com) to see what they’re all about. I’ll likely update along the process with my impressions of how the service works, and wether it’s acually delivering quality impressions. I have a feeling it won’t really add up to much, but you never know.
Dear Entrecard,
Please stop spamming these comments.
Thank you,
The Management
Entrecard is a good idea but I think it needs a major rewrite as its so easy to game (took me about 10 mins to work out how to manipulate it) .
I signed up to Spott and got 2000 free impressions and best of all the ability to add multiple blogs / sites to a single account. The only concern i have is the 850 pixel rule which means you need to put the ad at the top of your site.
My only other suggestion would be to clean up the code you use to embed the ads as right now its a table which is very long due to the encryption.
Microsoft behind a company that is ripping off someone else (Entrecard)? No way! Couldn’t be!
This seems like BlogRush to me, same idea, different ad size. I just hope it’s not a hype thing again… I will wait until it takes off before I sign up for it, I don’t want to get dunked on by like the BlogRush guys…
I’ve got to say this is an interesting idea, but I fear the people who would use it are the same that would prefer not to have an add for competitors products on their site. Might be a good fit for small blog sites, though.
Wow Michael,
Now I know why you are too busy to answer my emails! You are immersed in the resurrection of questionable services on TC.
Seriously, when are we going to the next phase of Web (whatever)? I guess you are right though, this is for some people. I just wish a GREAT story would emerge so that your talents spent on link farms. Answer my mail …it might be as important as this
Always,
Phil
Wasn’t Adbrite once a Comet Cursor or HotBar type company?
yeah i agree. let’s slow down on the entrecard spam.
…adgridwork, however, looks legit. will add it.
Entrecard needs some love to they offer the same thing lol.
http://www.promomaker.blogspot.com
stupid name , but it will work because websites will use it.
cool idea!
Time is ripe to do so, to welcome the bubble back…
tony didn’t found zappos. nick swinmurn did. tony was an investor and now the ceo. get your facts straight!
Currently in Indian space we dont see impact of model similar to link exchange. Link exchanges which are evolved versions of webrings dont see much traction due to lack of middle tier websites with ability to give >10,000 impressions per day.
Currently demand is greater than supply in our market and till the time it changes all type of reminent inventory will get monetized.
Yay, free credits! Thanks Michael …
You fail hard for not writing about Entrecard.
#2 Startups - Thanks for the support … we’ve been around for over a year now with over 20,000 sites participating and have yet to see any love from any of the Web 2.0 bloggers … ah well, maybe we should get a big marketer (John Reese and BlogRush) or an established company (AdBrite and Spottt) to feel the TC love
#36 Sid - Actually thats a flawed assumption. If the network of ‘exchangers’ is large enough, each of the sites participating can leverage the reach of that network to get a decent amount of traffic. Obviously you will not get 1000s of visitors a day from a FREE link exchange / advertising network, but the real estate given to the advertising space is a price that many smaller bloggers and less established sites will gladly pay for 100 or so extra visitors a day.
Nick
AdGridwork.com
How about a review for http://sitehoppin.com ?
You don’t even have to sign up, we just send u free traffic. lol… and we get drunk more than all the other guys.
entrecard has basically now been banned from techcrunch.
It just so happens that I use Entrecard. I’m a regular visitor to TC, but this is twice in less than a week that I have commented. Last week I felt compelled to tell the truth when you guys erroneously declared “Android Delayed Already.”
For those watching at home, TC was shown the results of not fact checking a product or service last week. I think it’s kinda sad that Entrecard didn’t even get a mention in your post above. Even as small as “For a similar service, you might be interested…”
Could it be because Entrecard didn’t offer you guys up a bunch of free credits for a mention? Surely someone with nearly 670k subscribers doesn’t need to sign up on their own for help.
adgridwork - you don’t need to hire a big marketer, just try sending an email.
“entrecard has basically now been banned from techcrunch.”
[deleted]
Quick comment about the name - I discovered it while writing an email to a friend: the site URL is http://www.spottt.com (with 3 T’s, not 2…)
http://www.spott.com is an empty site….
This is a real bummer guys.
See posts #11, #23, … like me, they thought it was ‘Spott’.
You will miss a lot of (viral) traffic because of this.
You wanna hear about Entrecard? I’ll tell you about Entrecard.
The service is basically a small blog geared link exchange based on a click economy (reminds me a lot of whuffie if you’re a Doctorow fan). Visit a site in the network and “leave” your card for the author. Both sides earn a credit, which can be used to purchase ads on other sites in the directory.
For new or really small blogs, especially people who aren’t already swamped with sites to read and want to connect with similar blogs, the service can bring you traffic and commenters to get off to a good start. But as a PR4 / 200 subscriber site, it takes way too much time to evaluate blogs to campaign with, approve advertisers, and keep dropping those cards to keep your value up. My time is worth more than what it takes to build up enough credits to start doing anything with, but I get 10x more traffic from other Entrecard users than I do from purchased (and supposedly targeted) ad impressions anyway.
For my purposes, a passive service like Spottt would probably suit me just as well.
http://www.sophistechate.com/1.....pportunity
Disclaimer: They sent me a tshirt.
I feel bad for AdBrite. They try so hard but can’t seem to get bought.
c-squared - do you really think a comment like that is going to remain on the site?
I’m sure entrecard is awesome for you. But when i checked it out last year I felt that it was too much administrative work for the amount of traffic that could be expected, and didn’t see it working. I make calls like that every day. Often revisit them. But this kind of spam attack is not going to get us to write about them.
Are images allowed in the comments? If not, http://www.johncow.com/images/droppedit.jpg
@Michael,
Request you to please check with google if participation in Spottt will amount to link exchange. Because link exchange is against adsense tos. Many publishers may get into serious trouble if google starts cancelling their accounts.
P.S: I have indeed written to adsense support. However I think there is better chance that you will get a faster response.
Here is a link from adsense blog which says
**********************************************************
We occasionally receive questions from publishers interested in using traffic exchanges to bring traffic to their site. While these services may help advertise your site, we don’t recommend using them, as they may also result in similar invalid activity
**********************************************************
http://adsense.blogspot.com/20.....grams.html