San Francisco based Technorati has acquired AdEngage, a twelve person advertising network based in Los Angeles, in an all stock transaction. The AdEngage platform will remain a free standing, branded service, and Technorati will also launch a version of the platform under its new Technorati Media brand. The size of the transaction is not being disclosed.
This follows Technorati’s August acquisition of BlogCritics, a network of blog content.
AdEngage, which was founded in 2004, sells advertising for 4,000 sites, and has 13 billion ad impressions per month, says Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra. Many of those sites are adult oriented, so Technorati isn’t merging it with its core service. Instead, they’ll launch a separate version of it under the Technorati Media brand in a few weeks. The screen shot below shows what the current, password protected version of the site looks like.
For now the network sells self-service text and pho-text (thumbnail with text) ads on a cost-per-week basis. Soon other advertising types will be added (125×125 display ads to start), as well as CPC and CPM payment options.
The current Technorati Media offering is for larger sites that Technorati partners with. When the AdEngage platform launches smaller blogs can sign up as well, and hopefully command relatively higher advertising rates by grouping with similar blogs in “spheres of influence,” as Jalichandra puts it, based on tagging and linking behavior.
I hope advertisers will get good boost up to their ads through this coalition.
http://www.adengage.com/ provides lot of information about targeted site like Avg. CPC, Avg Clicks, Top performing sites, top Alexa rank sites etc. & makes it easy for advertisers to choose best site for them. But most of sites listed there are entertainment & funny sites.
This is a fantastic move by Technorati. By creating a marketplace for anyone to sell ads directly to their blog they’ve truly opened up the long tail. I can see this acting as an additional space to compliment adsense or others.
On an overall eCPM basis, centering this marketplace around specific sites just doesn’t perform well — for either the advertiser or the publishers. It’s not an efficient use of inventory.
Technorati instead needs to sell on a keyword basis, thereby offering better targeting and wider more relevant delivery across a wider network. But contextual isn’t what I’m talking about. They should sell on an affinity basis, offering advertisers the opportunity to target people based on their interests instead of the page/site based on its content.
Advertisers get better targeting/ROI. Publishers get higher payouts, and Technorati achieves better sell-thru on their inventory.
13 billion ad impressions a month? if only each ad impression was worth a penny. When your accustomed to slinging porn you dont need keywords. a blonde with big breasts and nice rear works fine. One hot chick is worth thousands of keywords.
technorady needs to diversify its domain portfolio. im willing to guess over 95% of americans dont know what technorady means, does, or even how to spell it. Natural Language Location is a good place to start.
WordLocator.com
Brilliant move….bring “reach” to the proposition and wrap in monetization….(and benefit from the existing AE network)…..very smart
I get that everyone and their dog wants to build their own advertising network but with the economy sucking is there still an endless supply of advertising dollars to be had? Furthermore are we getting to the point where people are going to feel so overwhelmed by ad inputs in every medium possible that they will boycott companies that advertise. Very few ads are actually useful. Most are generally useless, annoying, in your face, waste a click garbage.
At what point do ads become too pervasive and at what point does that cause user backlash?
This likely is not on topic with the post but are going towards a Shanghai or Vegas styled internet?
There’s plenty of ad dollars, but the sectors are changing. Consumer banks, for instance, are ramping up their ad budgets.
Good move for Technorati, I currently use them.
http://gatesand...s.blogspot.com/
Short Technorati.
In hopes of creating an ad network, they’re biting off more than they can chew.
What a buffoon. You can’t short Technorati – it’s a private company.
Do you possibly know, what part of money paid by publishers goes to websites? Is it like 70% ? 50%?
btw. i am kinda convinced, that the present situation in the economy will prevent hilarious amounts of $$$ being spent od advertising.
This is quite similar to performancing ads. After the inclusion of 125×125 ad format, the picture will become more clear.
next thing you know, google may be going after them adding it to their blogspot network
So technorati is going to have an affiliate program now for publishers?
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WOW, Technorati really seems to be on the move, good for them! Also, kudos to MA who wrote an almost glowing perspective on what he had predicted to fail and has bashed in the past, that being Technorati of course.
So I’m curious to hear how Federated Media will compete? Their so-called “conversational marketing” seems to lack both conversation and overall engagement that they promise, meanwhile they don’t have an anchor like Technorati does with their proper site.
Does the middle thru long tail approach of Technorati give them the lead in this space? or do you see Federated or Six Apart as the leading company to follow?
If “adult oriented” means that these sites have a warning message before anyone can see their content – I wonder how these guys look at the ethical side of their business…
To me, Technorati used to mean clean business. Are they getting dirty with this acquisition?….
I really doubt it… In terms of going “dirty.”
I’m sure they’ll probably go clean, if anything and use adengage’s core utility to reach deep into the long-tail.
Looks to be a really smart move and is exciting from a blogger perspective.
Are you just speculating on the “going dirty” or is that a strategy of theirs? Just curious…
No speculation at all.
It’s just that all the sex industry (I guess it’s another name for “adult industry”) has its own niche where many are reluctant to build their businesses. Being associated with this puts a mark on a businessperson’s personality in others’ eyes.
I asked because the website I am launching soon may have adult elements in it (user-generated content) and I don’t know how to handle this in terms of who I will be perceived as. Especially that my next projects will have nothing to do with adult stuff. Will this be a bad mark on my personality in the future? Dunno… Better to think about this now and prevent it somehow.
As for “dirty” – I have nothing against adult stuff. I guess everyone is interested in it, but the society imposes some standards that accuse people whose business has anything to do with it. Europe is different – if a politician has an extramarital affair, the society doesn’t care. The North-American reality is totally opposite and I am in North America, so I have to live by these rules…
I know that TC wrote about Zivity and other adult-content sites. Would be nice if it wrote about the ethical side of it – how founders/investors feel about it and if it affects somehow their personal lives, etc. I understand that money talks (and that sex always sells, thus lots of money are to be made here), but what about the moral side of it (if any)?
As any self serve platform will tell you, there’s always be an element of all types of content, but there are huge walls in place to ensure it never makes it anywhere near the advertisers who don’t want it.
TechnoratiEngage is a completely separate platform. We’re reviewing and evaluating the applying sites against our blog quality guidelines before they are accepted. This is not just to filter out specific types of content, but also to ensure a pure focus on blogging and social media.
Thanks, Darin F – that’s exactly why we did this – to help bloggers at all levels, especially the long tail, make money.
Wow, I can’t wait to see what AdEngage is going to become
-Mike
AdEngage is awesome. A lot more flexible compared to Adsense. You can also place images next to ads for higher a CTR.
Cool, congrats to Richard and the team for continuing to execute on their vision!
Must be nice to have that kind of cash lying around.
http://www.privacy-tools.at.tc
Good news from Technorati
Adengage sends a lot of hitbot traffic. I ran several campaigns with them, and I know their publishers are cheating, or they are cheating themselves, that is for sure. I even got an adsense account banned because of their traffic. The number of unique they send is very very limited, you will get like 100 uniques and 10000 raws.
However, to send crappy traffic to a crappy site, such a TGP, it helps.
I’m so happy my site was approved by Technoratimedia. Some reports i’ve heard is that, they only approve high traffic and quality sites. So flattering!
Just joined ” AdEngage “, looking good.