The first speaker in this session was Gurbaksh Chahal the CEO of Blue Lithium, an ad delivery/brokerage company that is pushing 10billion ads a month. Basically they’ve come up with an interesting algorithm that relies on immense amounts of data mining to deliver demographic ads tied with behavior pattern analysis. Seems like a fairly smart play, but the big question that has to loom over these companies is: what happens when google decides to compete with you?
Next up was Keith Smith, the CEO of Zango, a video advertising company that works with publishers and such to monetize user generated video content. Their shtick is that they run a toolbar that people need to install to have the relevant ads delivered to them. The play they are making is that video watchers don’t want to watch or click on ads before and after the videos, so why not interrupt their browsing with ads later???? HMMM sounds like adware/spyware or at least dangerously close to it. I don’t know about you, but It seems like this is like 1997 all over again. Key questions to Zango: 1. why would I install your software? 2. Why do you think I would WANT my browser sessions to be interrupted by some interstitial ads.
Anand Subramanian, CEO of ContextWeb, was next, and honestly had the best presentation of the first 3. I’m writing this as he speaks, but I like what he’s saying now. He posts alot of interesting points and is giving an interesting model of publisher-determined pricing. Basically you are a blogger, publisher, anything, and you post your minimum ad sales price, they then go out and sell for as much as they can get, but pay you what you determine is your floor. The only immediate flaw I can see is if they dont share valuations and revenue info with the publishers. I would be very pissed if I set my CPM at $10, and they manage to get $30, but never tell me.
Steve Ellis, the CEO of pump audio, was next up. His company does an interesting task of reselling and licensing indie musicians content to television and advertising companies. This is a smart idea for user generated audio (indie music) and content considering the incredible complexity that IP licensing entails. They also have a super slick method for purchasing and selecting the content. I think overall this is a smart move.
So the last two presenters in this category were Turn.com, and Rovion.com. Quick summary: Turn is another ad delivery company without too much that caught my eye. Rovion reminds me of sitepal, it places annoying audio ads/videos over people’s pages. I can see this being clever for a big company’s annual report and wanting a personal touch from the CEO, but for that, why not just put a cheaper flash video in there somewhere? Yawn.
