The Rubicon Project, an LA-based company that is trying to optimize online ads, has launched a new line of online ad inventory, comprised of sites it has certified as “high-quality.” Its software already lets ad networks reach a site’s visitors based on market segments like geography and topic of the site, solving the problem of unsold or nearly worthless inventory. So this certification is an iteration on the earlier offering, that might make the company some more money.
The new certified sites are intended to help networks run ads from high-end advertisers, typically brands that pay to make sure their ads appear next to seemly and relevant content. The company says it carefully screens, rates and classifies partner sites using a combination of software and human verification. Some of Rubicon Projects in the ad-optimization area include AdBrite as well as Pubmatic, along with YieldBuild’s service for site-specific ad optimization.
Rubicon: No softening of the online ad market so far
Rubicon has also released a study today that shows, through its own data, how the online advertising market is become more competitive, and fragmenting (and why Rubicon is presented to take advantage of that — see the video below involving easter eggs, a shooting and a barbecue for more).
One interesting stat: While Google has seen a dip in clickthroughs on ads, rivals have been paying more money to publishers. The report concludes that there is no softening of the online ad market, and gives the following possible reasons for Google’s dip:
- It’s seeing more competition
- It reduced its ads’ sizes to decrease the number accidental clicks, decreasing payout to advertisers (in the short term, increasing value in the long-term, as we’ve said)
- Display ads are growing, possibly driven by increased brand spending on the web — Google’s focus on text ads means it isn’t serving brands that buy display ads in the ways that it needs to (maybe its purchase of DoubleClick or its relationship with ad conglomerate Publicis will help change that)
- Google may be sending more of its most valuable advertisers to its own properties, like YouTube, rather than to its partner sites running AdsenseVideo advertising, meanwhile, has yet to take off, the report says. Format issues are still being sorted out, while many advertisers refuse to run ads that associate their brands with questionable user-generated content.
Another interesting stat, is that around 45 percent of traffic to US sites run by Rubicon partners is coming from other countries, see screenshot. This deep interconnection between the US web and the rest of the world can be seen in the links and comments on blogs like VentureBeat, written in other languages, and it can be seen on widespread usage of popular web services like Facebook and Twitter.
The data was taken from Rubicon, which has served more than 10 billion ads across 625 websites and 62 ad networks during the first quarter of 2008.
The report includes some great analysis of the myriad forms that online advertising companies are currently offering. Download the PDF here.
Rubicon Project was founded by Frank Addante, who was previously a co-founder of L90/adMonitor, an ad-server company that was sold to ad conglomerate DoubleClick.
And finally, the video involving the easter eggs, the shooting and the barbecue:
