“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” — Albert Einstein

Defying Google: Adify CEO, Russ Fradin (Part 11)

Monday, May 14, 2007 | 3 comments

We left off at the point where I concluded that there is no network out there with any business ad inventory except FM.

SM: Part of my problem is that the Washington Post talked me into signing up, but they have no business ad inventory. RF: Well, start your own! Actually, I would never talk someone into leaving one of our customers’ networks, but many of the conversations I have inevitably turn into discussions about people starting their own networks.

SM: You mentioned Glam earlier, are they powered by you? RF: No they are not. Glam, FM Publishing and Jump Start are three very nice vertical networks who were started years before Adify, but when we were starting the business we really liked what they were doing. I would not call them competitors, I would call them kindred spirits. There are other folks who believe there is something different between aggregating high quality inventory in a vertical and just aggregating as much broad reach as you can find on the Internet.

SM: What advertisers are participating in your network today? RF: Other than the ones that have been announced, that is confidential to our clients. Only the ones that the Washington Post has announced are ones that I can talk about. Lufthansa and Marriott. There are many more, but those are really tough to go into. I can talk about technology and services, but that is a very good question and I will start getting permission from my network operators so I can start talking about this in the future, and I can answer those questions.

SM: Yes, I know about the Lufthansa and the Marriott ad buys that Washington Post has won. In fact, for travel bloggers, it looks like the number of options are increasing, and they can soon become free of the clutches of Google AdSense. Computer World’s technology blog network is likely to free the technology bloggers, and help them access strong ad inventory, higher CPM rates, and all those things that bloggers need for their sites to flourish!