Adgregate Markets, a TechCrunch 50 startup, has signed a distribution deal with Google’s DoubleClick. Adgregate’s ShopAds allow consumers to browse, interact, and ultimately purchase directly within an ad unit. Normal display ads take users away from a publisher’s site and brings them to a third-party store but Adgregate lets users buy products featured in ads without moving away from the page. Adgregate, which presented its technology at TechCrunch 50 last fall, received positive reviews from our panelists, who included entrepreneur Marc Andreessen; MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe; Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, angel investor Yossi Vardi; and former Yahoo executive VP Ash Patel. The panelists unanimously agreed that Adgregate was a great idea that will make money and address a need in the display ad market.
It was only a matter of time before Adgregate’s technology attracted big-name interest. ShopAds, which is a widget, can replace any size banner ad and will now be available to all of DoubleClick’s advertisers. If a user views the ad widget and wants to buy the product it’s advertising, they need only to click the description button under the ad and click “add to cart” to buy it. From there, the user can pay directly in the widget by inputting credit card information in a secure buying process.
Adgregate will share revenue with both DoubleClick and the retailer whose goods are being sold in the ShopAd widget. But the publisher of the ad only gets a share of revenue if the retailer has accepted them as an affiliate publisher. If that is the case, then the publisher will also get a separate commission fee from the advertiser. This isn’t a bad deal for publishers. Advertisers have an incentive to pay a higher commission to publishers so they put their ads in a more prominent spot on their page, but the money is being split an awful lot of ways.
Competitors to Adgregate include Nooked and Lemonade, which both also allow publishers to embed an e-commerce widget on their sites, but lead users to the retailer’s site for purchases. Adrgregate’s technology is useful to publishers because users can purchase an item in the ShopAd widget without having to ever leave their site.
Display ad network DoubleClick was bought by Google in 2007 for a $3.1 billion, outbidding Microsoft and pushing through eventual approval of the deal in both the U.S. and Europe.
Here’s an example of one of Adgregate’s embeddable ShopAd widgets:
