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April 20, 2008

Six Apart Launches Ad Network, Moves Into Services

Michael Arrington

32 comments »

six-aprt-logo.pngSix apart is launching an advertising network for blogs and will begin offering professional services (design, implementation, development, optimization) after acquiring New York based creative agency Apperceptive (this was correctly guessed by Cameron Barret in a Friday post (see comment 156) asking for readers to tell us who they thought Six Apart acquired).

Advertising Network - Six Apart Media

The company is now competing with Federated Media Publishing, Glam, the upcoming Technorati ad network and a number of others to get bloggers to join their network.

Six Apart has long sold advertising for itself on its network of free blogs on LiveJournal (before it was sold) and Vox. CEO Chris Alden says they have significant experience in grouping like-blogs and selling to large advertisers. The only difference now is that they will partner with the blog publisher and share revenue. They are partnering with Adify to provide back end admin infrastructure for publishers (accounts, payouts, etc.).

Six Apart says they’ve been able to group blogs and sell advertising to big brands (HP, MSN, Universal, among others), something that is hard to do without big name publishers. They think they can create a high value ad network for the masses. Currently, sites like FM and Glam provide high value advertisers but only to top sites. If Six Apart can deliver those kinds of advertisers, and the rates they pay, to millions of small blogs, they may have a hit on their hands.

There is no requirement that the blogs be using a Six Apart blogging platform. If you can add advertisements to your blog, you can join the network. Six Apart Media is led by David Tokheim.

Blog Services - Six Apart Services

Six Apart will also begin selling services to blogs for a fee. The core services will be offered by the Apperceptive team in New York, and include site design, back end development, search engine optimization and other services. These services are aimed at larger publishers that can pay, and will also be provided free or at a discount to members of the advertising network. The site isn’t neglecting their smaller customers though, and is also launching consulting services that are designed to help all bloggers maximize their marketing impact.

Six Apart Services is led by Marissa Levinson and David Jacobs.

CrunchBase Information
Six Apart
Apperceptive
Information provided by CrunchBase
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    April 21st, 2008 at 1:43 am

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Comments

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  1. The Little League Coach

    April 20th, 2008 at 9:04 pm

    More people competing for advertisers for blogs!!! I like that!!!!! The more the merrier and the more likely I am to be able to help businesses hock their goods.

  2. bob cobb

    April 20th, 2008 at 9:16 pm

    When can I sign up for the ad network?

  3. Jesse Gardner

    April 20th, 2008 at 9:20 pm

    As a Movable Type consultant, let me just say that frankly I’m excited about a service arm of Six Apart. Having the people developing the product also developing *with* the product means that it’s going to be much more useful. It also means that things like best practices and common approaches will become a lot more apparent, especially with a branch of the company dedicated to not only doing what the rest of us have been doing now for a while, but helping define the process and enabling us (consultants) to do it better.

  4. Jay Allen

    April 20th, 2008 at 9:31 pm

    Jesse, you’re right on. The Services division is a big step in the process of Six Apart’s maturation as a software company and probably one of the most positive investments Six Apart has ever made in its professional community. I’ll be writing up a great deal more about that later (and about media services) but for now, there’s a lot more information over at the Blog Herald

    http://www.blogherald.com/2008.....divisions/

  5. My Blog Posts

    April 20th, 2008 at 9:53 pm

    Dear Micheal - Is it going to be like Google Adsense ?

  6. slim

    April 20th, 2008 at 10:08 pm

    I don’t think any Adify networks have really scaled, especially ones that are not the core business of the client.

  7. 113.com

    April 20th, 2008 at 10:18 pm

    Has WordPress done the same? ;-)

  8. Nation

    April 20th, 2008 at 10:25 pm

    It will be interesting if they start sharing revenue with the people on vox … that would be a potential big boost to vox.

  9. Dave Winer

    April 20th, 2008 at 10:31 pm

    Wish they had bought Edgeio instead. Or Guy Kawasaki.

  10. Yeah right

    April 20th, 2008 at 10:33 pm

    Interesting, Six Apart “acquires” another company (remember Rojo?) that they’ve been cozy with for years and instead of David Jacob’s living off 6a’s referrals to unhappy or unserviced MT customers, Six Apart now offers his same services, for a fee, under their own name.

    They didn’t acquire an ad network or ad platform technology, they “partnered” with Adify and the headline is “Six Apart launches an Ad Network”?!

    Who’s in the ad network? Besides LiveJournal? The 22 users on Vox? TypePad bloggers who aren’t already monetizing their sites with Federated Media? Blog Ads? or Google Ad Sense? MT blogs that aren’t selling their own ads?

    It’s funny how, two years after Federated Media had the idea and created the tools bring ads to TP, MT and WP bloggers, Six Apart wises up and now decides they should be selling ads on their own platform for their own blogger customers. Duh.

    BTW: isn’t Andrew Anker on the Board at Federated Media. Isn’t there a conflict of interest there. Or is that how chummy chummy they all are over their bubble tea?

  11. Jesse Gardner

    April 20th, 2008 at 10:39 pm

    Oh, and for those who want more information, Blog Herald has a great interview with Anil Dash regarding the new announcements: http://www.blogherald.com/2008.....divisions/

  12. Duncan Riley

    April 20th, 2008 at 11:32 pm

    Nice move from SA, and it seems to be the market to be in at the moment. I look forward to seeing what they’re offering in terms of advertising

  13. nj

    April 20th, 2008 at 11:43 pm

    Just noticed their new website… cool
    http://www.sixapart.com/

  14. Joshua Konkle

    April 21st, 2008 at 12:07 am

    It is interesting, but content is king and cash is king, ergo, content is cash.

    I reached out to Apperceptive last year and had zero response. In fact, I only found one vendor who would be able to provide a reliable MT solution that didn’t depend on typepad, which is a limited edition version.

    Anyway, they shouldn’t be counting themselves ahead, they still need to generate content and solve the ‘roll-up’ problem.

    There are working business plans for these things, but it remains to be seen if they can make theirs work.

    JK

  15. Darren

    April 21st, 2008 at 1:45 am

    Hey does this mean I won an Ipod? I said an adnetwork :D

    Makes sense really, I am suprised they havn’t done it earlier.

  16. DC Crowley

    April 21st, 2008 at 1:47 am

    I’m not a six apart fan, but this sounds like a very clever move. Especially the ‘grouping like-blogs and selling to large advertisers’ could be a real winner. I do hope though that they show their own blog users full respect when rolling this out, using opt-in and a good revenue share.

  17. Gubatron

    April 21st, 2008 at 5:13 am

    Does anyone know of an Ad network that specializes on monetizing Brazilian or Chinese traffic?

    Please contact me at gubatron@gmail.com

  18. micfo.com

    April 21st, 2008 at 5:40 am

    Look like great deal for movable types blog network.

  19. Larry Genkin

    April 21st, 2008 at 6:03 am

    Smart move. Now they just need to promote their blogs through The USA TODAY’s Blogger & Podcaster Guide to generate the audience that will make this worthwhile — http://www.bloggerandpodcasterguide.com/register

  20. fritz

    April 21st, 2008 at 8:06 am

    will be interesting to see how wordpress reacts to this

  21. Joshua Konkle

    April 21st, 2008 at 6:07 pm

    **tap tap tap** Is this still on?

    This just in - apperceptive.com DID send us an email back when we emailed them back in August of 07. In my defense, I did search before hitting “submit comment” but I couldn’t find the response.

    My sincerest apologies to David Jacobs and his team at Apperceptive. Despite the cost hurdles, I’m sure they produce very compelling sites for their base price point of $10,000.

    However, I was able to build the system at http://www.dciginc.com incrementally and keep the development costs relatively low, building first as a product then as a website. The DCIGInc.com product and business model had to be fleshed out before putting a minimum $10K into UI development.

    http://www.dciginc.com is totally 100% MT, with Apache back-end.

    /That is all/

    Joshua Konkle

  22. Voice 2.0

    April 21st, 2008 at 6:09 pm

    There are thousands of bloggers who are in need of a better performing ad network that Google Adsense.

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