It’s been quite a while since we last covered Triggit, a startup that made it easy to integrate ads into websites using drag and drop Javascript. As it turns out, it’s for good reason: the company has spent the last year in stealth reworking its core product and adopting an entirely new business model, which it’s now unveiling to the public. No longer is Triggit a consumer facing website editor — it’s now a service that allows advertisers to easily participate in real-time ad exchanges. Alongside the new businesses model the company has also brought on a slew of new angel investors that include Reid Hoffman, Joi Ito, Russ Siegelman, and more (the full list is at the bottom of this post).
Triggit’s new product was built to take advantage of the shift in advertising towards real-time exchanges. Whereas traditional ad networks don’t always allow advertisers to choose where their ads will be displayed (instead, they pay to appear on a ‘bucket’ of sites), real-time exchanges allow these advertisers to pick and choose exactly which site and which viewers they’d like to appear in front of. Triggit has built an automated bidder that makes it easy for advertisers to participate in these platforms.
When real-time exchanges have an impression to deliver to a publisher, they poll advertisers in a super-fast auction to see who will pay the highest price for that impression. Triggit will analyze the data provided by the exchange, such as the site the impression will appear on and the geographical location, age, and gender of the viewer, and bid accordingly. Advertisers using Triggit’s service can set up some rules to determine which viewers they’re looking for, and Triggit’s algorithms will handle the rest, determining where and when to bid (this contrasts with some other services, which require human interaction). The service is exposed to 5 billion impressions a day across thousands of sites from various real-time exchanges, and uses its ever-increasing dataset to further optimize bidding.
Founder Zach Coelius says that Triggit’s platform has been bidding and buying ads for customers since July, with early clients that include Microsoft.
This space is obviously heating up, with Google, Microsoft, and more building out their own real-time exchanges that will give Triggit lots of room to run. But the company will also be facing off with plenty of competition: we just saw DataXu debut at this years TechCrunch50, and other competitors include MediaMath and many of other ad platforms that are adapting to the real-time markets.
Here’s a full list of Triggit’s new investors:
Reid Hoffman: Founder of Linkedin, investor in Facebook
Russ Siegelman, Partner at Kleiner Perkins and Founder of MSN
Larry Braitman, Founder of Adify and Flycast
Brett and Scott Crosby, Co-founders of Google Analytics
Brian O’Kelley, CEO of AppNexus and former CTO of Right Media
Joi Ito, Investor in Technorati and Six Apart
Ben Narison, Founder of Fashionmall.com
Manu Kumar, Founder of Sneaker Labs
Asher Waldfogel, Founder of Peakstream and Toll Bridge Technologies
Digital Garage Japan
Triple Point Capital
pow!
Thanks Jason, we really appreciate the great write up.
Check out Adtoma Fusion as well http://www.adtoma.com
I realize you took the screenshot from their website, but it’s strange that they are using a screenshot of Google Analytics.
If its so great why can’t we create and account and checkout the engine under the hood?
Same goes for MediaMath. No biases here!
congrats Zach!
I wish we could let you under the hood. We are proud of what is under there. We just haven’t yet built a self-serve interface yet. Don’t worry it is on the list.
Congrats Zach, this is way better than the original offering!
Thanks, we try to get slightly better everyday.
Congratulations Zach!
Looks interesting, except the logo should be redesigned immediately.
Great stuff Zach! I’d love to talk about your business more over poker this Friday night.
Hope it’s good for publishers like myself as well.
All in!
Nice work, Zach. Looking forward to trying it out.
Congrats Zach! I’m sure I’ll run into you soon to hear more
The UI looks cool. I like how I dont have to relearn my way around…its like google analytics, wait, it is google analytics. Bullshit!
Cool service, but the tag line has to change. “A leader on the Real Time Advertising Exchanges”. Hire a VP of Marketing fast! No one cares if you’re a leader. Be the best… but at a minimum your site should immediately tell us what you offer.
Adwords… “Advertise your business on Google”. Clear message.
Zach is a superb entrepreneur, intensely user-focused and truly obsessed with delivering value for customers. His fearlessness in iterating Triggit is inspiring. Great guy, great company.
Thanks for all the support we really appreciate it.