AdKeeper Wants You to Store Ads, Not Block Them

PC Mag

Some users use ad-blocking tools to eliminate ads from their Web browser. But a new startup, AdKeeper hopes that you'll bookmark them.

AdKeeper, a new online advertising service run by the former chief executive of About.com, Scott Kurnit, hopes that by storing the ads into a small online repository, users will go back to the ads, interact with them, and ultimately, buy.

The service is in beta and will formally launch in 2011. But AdKeeper said its group of "charter advertisers" included Allstate, Ally Bank, AT&T, Best Buy, CBS, Ford, Gap, General Mills, InterContinental Hotels Group, JetBlue, Kmart, Kraft Foods, Macy's, McDonald's, Pepsi, Sara Lee, Sears, Showtime, The Advertising Council, Unilever and Warner Bros.

The service supplies interactive ads, as others do. The difference is that ads designed by the AdKeeper service contain a small "K" on them. When the a user clicks on the "K" (for "keep") the ad goes into a Keeper application for the user to interact with later. The Keeper is actually the AdKeeper Web page, where users don't even have to log in; the service "tracks you with very anonymous cookies," a company spokeswoman said.

"Internet advertising was modeled after TV advertising – where the consumer views content, then interruptive ads, then more content. But the web is a totally dynamic environment that places consumers in the driver's seat," said Scott Kurnit, the company's founder and the former founder of About.com. "It's time for the advertising experience to catch up with the rest of the web experience. AdKeeper affords consumers the opportunity to engage with the advertising that interests them most, at the time and place of their choosing. It's 'on my time advertising.' It's invitational, not interruptive. It's for brands that respect their consumers. And it's for consumers who want to take charge."

AdKeeper representatives were not immediately available for comment.

Online advertising generates $300 billion of economic activity in the U.S., according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which tracks online advertising. But site operators are making less on them. Although cost-per-million estimates are difficult to acquire, online ad network Adify released data last year that found that ad impressions on automotive Web sites fell from $17.26 to $12.47.

While Web site operators make money from ads, installing FlashBlock or plug-ins like AdBlock have become more of a common practice for users; note the comments in our list of recommended add-ons for Firefox; Mozilla itself also recommends the plug-ins.

An IAB representative said that the group does not have any estimates for the amount of revenue lost via ad-blocking software.

To compensate, advertisers have become increasingly focused on serving targeted ads to specific users, attempting to determine their online habits through a variety of methods, including identifying their location and browsing habits. AdKeeper represents another avenue to boost CPMs.

The IAB will release its semi-annual report on the online advertising industry on Tuesday, in conjunction with PWC. Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. hit $5.9 billion for the first quarter of 2010, a 7.5 percent increase over the same period in 2009, the IAB reported in May.

In March, Conde Nast-owned Ars Technica served users with a blank page each time the site detected ad-blocking software was in effect, canceling the experiment after 12 hours.

"Technologically, it was a success in that it worked. Ad blockers, and only ad blockers, couldn't see our content," editor-in-chief Ken Fisher wrote in a response. "We tested just one way of doing this, but have devised a way to keep it rotating were we to want to permanently implement it. But we don't. Socially, the experiment was a mixed bag. A bunch of people whitelisted Ars, and even a few subscribed. And while others showed up to support our actions, there was a healthy mob of people criticizing us for daring to take any kind of action against those who would deny us revenue even though they knew they were doing so. Others rightly criticized the lack of a warning or notification as to what was going on."

AdKeeper's board includes Jeremy Allaire, founder and chief executive of Brightcove; John Battelle, founder and chief executive of Federated Media; Peggy Conlon, president and chief executive of the The Advertising Council; Janet Robinson, president and chief executive of The New York Times; and George Schweitzer, president of the CBS Marketing Group.

AOL Struggling for Ads during Overhaul

Fortune

 

AOL was coming back with a vengeance, brand-new AOL CEO Tim Armstrong told Fortune's 2009 Brainstorm Tech conference last year. He was fresh out of the starting gate, and had just done a 100-day "listening tour," checking in with AOL's global workforce.  He was pumped, and ready to shake up the brand.

But the problem with cleaning up a brand is that there's some turmoil in the interim. For AOL (AOL) that meant trying to rejuvenate its image, cutting costs, cutting jobs, yanking some investments, making others. Armstrong also needs to figure out how to turn AOL's strengths -- instant messaging and customer familiarity -- into a profit.

At last year's conference, Armstrong said that AOL was going to do for online content what Google (GOOG) did for online advertising. That is, build a thorough, targeted delivery method from the ground up. Unfortunately, you need advertising to pay the bills to make the content, and advertisers have been cautious during AOL's massive makeover.

Advertising revenue dropped 19% percent to $354.3 million, according to AOL's first-quarter earnings report. The company's profits were $34.7 million, down from $82.7 million last year. Armstrong said that AOL has a ton of data about users, which should be money in the bank as far as targeted advertising. But right now, the company is still working on tuning up the platform.

Armstrong just appointed 28-year-old Maureen Sullivan as chief marketing officer -- she used to work for Google as Armstrong's assistant. At AOL, she's been working on logo redesigns to freshen up the site. AOL has also built a "Homepage Blog," which updates users about new AOL features like themes and privacy settings. It's only had one post in 2010, and it was in February.

Last year, Armstrong mentioned that AOL was going to move social networking site Bebo into the venture capital arm of the company and monitor its performance from there. In April, AOL announced that the match didn't pan out, and it would either sell Bebo or shut it down. The company is still looking for a way to link its instant messaging capabilities, which are strong, with solid social networking partner.

AOL's to-do list also includes plans to modernize Mapquest and manage a host of other offspring properties, like Engadget, Autoblog, and hyperlocal journalism site Patch.com, that will fuel AOL's proposed strategy to carpet-bomb online content. At the "D: All Things Digital" conference on June 3, Armstrong announced that AOL would be looking for a partner to help power its search engine for the site. He said that so far, he's been talking with his former company, Google.

Armstrong is on deadline, according to a Business Insider blog post that mentioned an investor note from AOL chief financial officer Artie Minson who said that Armstrong will have another year to start pulling the company up by its bootstraps.

He will appear again this year at Brainstorm. We'll see if the overhaul is over and he can really start pushing a fresh brand.

More Web Ads Improve Their Aim
As Originally Posted in The Wall Street Journal

As marketers scale back their ad budgets, some new technologies that make it easier for marketers to track the impact of their online advertising are gaining ground.

Products based on these technologies -- such as customized ads that show different products to different users, Web ads hidden inside links in text, and online coupons -- are part of what is called "performance-driven advertising." That's because the products aim to improve and more precisely measure how a particular ad performs.

While no one format is likely to emerge as a silver bullet for marketers seeking to use their ad dollars more efficiently, the advertising industry is betting on these technologies to increase online advertising spending. Altogether, the U.S. online-ad market is expected to increase 9% to $25.7 billion in 2009, slowing from its year-earlier growth rate of 11%, according to estimates from research firm eMarketer.

Internet retailer Overstock.com is becoming a big user of performance-driven ad products. The Salt Lake City company is planning to spend about $15 million, or 20% of its overall marketing budget for this year, on personalized ads from Choicestream, which makes product-recommendation software, says Overstock Chief Executive Patrick Byrne.

To devise the personalized ads, which Overstock started testing a few months ago, Choicestream relies on data the retailer provides about what customers browse and purchase on its site. Choicestream uses the data to select what personalized products and offers to insert into Overstock ads as they appear to potential customers browsing the Web.

Mr. Byrne says that while Overstock hasn't had much luck with online display advertising in the past, the new, personalized ads drove a sevenfold increase in clicks on the ads and a threefold increase in sales relative to other display ads. "We are ramping it up as quickly as we can," he says.

Internet giants Yahoo and Teracent, which develops online display-ad technology for clients like Hewlitt Packard, offer customized ad products similar to Choicestream's. Yahoo's version, called Smart Ads, debuted in 2007. Michael Walrath, a senior vice president at Yahoo, says demand for Smart Ads has grown during the economic downturn, even though fourth-quarter revenue was relatively flat from the previous year. A new Yahoo service that allows advertisers to target their display ads to users who have searched for particular terms has also gotten a good reception, he says.

Advertisers' "budgets may be reduced, but the expectations of driving business aren't being reduced," adds Mr. Walrath.

Companies like Choicestream, Yahoo and Teracent hope to steal some thunder from search advertising, which remains one of the biggest and fastest-growing ad formats. Since search ads are related to what a person is searching for on the Web, consumers often find them more relevant than other ads, and advertisers typically find them more cost effective.

But as budgets tighten, other formats that can prove they are worth their price are gaining momentum too. Coupons Inc., which makes software to help companies create and distribute online coupons, is among the companies that are benefiting. It has seen a recent surge in interest from advertisers looking for more cost-effective online marketing options, says CEO Steven Boal. Mr. Boal says the company expects to issue $1 billion in coupons this year, up from $300 million last year, and is drawing new customers who appreciate that they pay for the service only when a consumer prints out a coupon.

Committed revenue for the year at Vibrant, which creates in-text ads, has doubled from a year ago, says the company's CEO and co-founder Doug Stevenson. In-text ads appear when a computer user hover a mouse over links that appear in the text on a Web page. Vibrant charges advertisers only when someone clicks on their ads.

The new ad formats are winning over some big marketers. Over the past year, auto maker Chrysler, whose brands include Dodge and Jeep, has shifted its online-ad spending away from lifestyle sites to sites, such as Edmunds.com, that are geared toward consumers who are in the market for a car, as well as toward performance-driven products like Vibrant's in-text ads. Chrysler is also continuing to spend on search ads, says Chuck Sullivan, director of interactive at Chrysler.

"The good news about the performance-based media is that it's very easy to track, and we are able to see what works and what doesn't work," Mr. Sullivan says.

Chrysler says the shift has paid off: The percentage of total retail sales attributed to online leads rose two percentage points in 2008 from the prior year.