The changes wrought by digital technology are coming fast and furious in the advertising community as AdBrite, a venture-backed ad marketplace, on Monday introduced a new version of its product that opens up the market to the purview of both buyer and seller.

AdBrite, which is backed by Sequoia Capital to the tune of $4 million, was originally a shareware product designed as a self-service ad network for publishers to sell ads.

The system has since grown into a full-service marketplace for both publishers and advertisers to buy and sell advertising on thousands of web sites categorized by type, such as arts and entertainment, education, automotive, and specialty sites.

Advertisers can go to AdBrite’s marketplace and choose the type of ads they want, pick the target customer, create variations of the ads, and create bids based directly on performance. They can also see where the ad appeared and the cost associated with each click.

Publishers can go to the site and choose the ad format—either text and banner ads, or active interstitials. They can sell ads directly on the site or be listed in AdBrite’s marketplace. Publishers are also able to review ads before they appear and set the price for ads purchased directly on the site.

The company offers 140 different user requirements for what advertisers and publishers need.

No More Black Box

Publishers can have AdBrite show another ad network such as Google’s AdSense, if they are dissatisfied with the revenue generated by AdBrite.

“This is full transparency,” said Philip Kaplan, one of the founders of AdBrite. “We are ripping off the hood of the car and showing everyone the engine. Instead of going through our list of 28,000 different sites, we ask a series of questions such as what location, age, ethnicity, and income level you are trying to hit.”

Mr. Kaplan is best known for his irreverent but popular dot-com boom-era site F***edCompany.com (see 20 Under 35: Philip Kaplan).

With Mr. Kaplan’s new company, when the advertiser is done selecting his or her conditions, the system says exactly how many matching pages and web sites are available to the advertiser in real time.

The company also has its unique version of a money-back guarantee. Publishers can set a reserve price that matches their price with Google’s AdSense program.

“Publishers don’t know up front if AdBrite will work better for them or whether AdSense would work better,” said Mr. Kaplan. “We guarantee that we won’t make them less money. It’s kind of risky, but this is what people want.”

AdBrite’s network reaches 20,000-plus sites with 350 new publishers signing up every day.AdBrite’s ads reach more than 62 million unique users monthly, up from 7 million per month at the start of 2005, according to comScore Media Metrix.

“We have torn off the cover of the advertising black box,” Mr. Kaplan said. “Anyone can go to our site and check on what things cost. We hope to create critical mass and become the eBay of the ad marketplace.”

del.icio.us

Digg this

Slash it