Madison Logic to serve up sales leads automatically
Internet ad veteran Erik Matlick has founded Madison Logic, a company dedicated to helping companies generate leads automatically with an ad serving platform called LeadFocus.
So far, 200 advertisers and 50 publishers have signed up.
In a year-long ramp up to the launch, the company has licensed dozens of media companies including: PC Magazine, iMediaConnection, ClickZ, Sourceforge, DMNews, Security Focus, and others. Matlick, chief executive of Madison Logic, says it’s like “Doubleclick for lead generation.”
The platform provides a suite of tools, including ad serving via contextual and behavioral targeting, inventory management, reporting, analytics and lead delivery/management. A publishing company such as AdWeek would take out a license to Madison Logic’s platform.
Basically, it lets the publisher create and track lead generation campaigns. An advertisers would tell the publishers they want to pay for a certain kind of lead, with unique demographics, such as people working as buyers at companies with over 1,000 employees. The publisher then adds the lead generation material, such as a white paper, to the site. Then the Madison Logic platform takes over, deciding what content pages or emails to target with that offer from the advertisers. The publishers logs in from time to time to see how the campaign is going and how much to bill the advertiser. Meanwhile, Madison Logic’s salespeople go out to sign up advertisers into the network. The advertisers create ads, but they have less control over where they appear. They simply appear automatically in places that fit the overall target demographic.
The goal is to place the right advertiser in front of the right consumer automatically. The publisher no longer has to spend a lot of time qualifying, managing or delivering leads. The advertiser can sign up to get ads placed throughout a network of publishers, allowing advertisers to backfill ads into accounts where it doesn’t make sense for the ad company to expend its own time.
In the past, publishers would have to hard-code sales pitches into their web pages and newsletters. Jason Young, chief executive of Ziff Davis Media, said Madison Logic’s platform lets the company take advantage of marketing opportunities with minimal strain on resources.
Matlick has 15 years of experience in media and web businesses. He previously founded IndustryBrains, a contextual ad firm that was acquired by Marchex for $30.6 million in 2005. Prior to that, he was the founder of MediaBrains.
Madison Logic is based in New York, was founded in 2006 and has 20 employees. It raised less than $1 million from angels including Mike Perlis of SoftBank Capital, early stage investor Geoff Judge, Metamorphic Ventures, Bill Benedict (founder of Alpine Meridian), Mark Walsh of VerticalNet, Ivan Inerfeld of Internet Capital Group, Elke Wong of IndustryBrains, and Matlick himself. Mostly, the competition consists of home-grown solutions among media companies. Customers include Ziff Davis, Nielsen Media, Penton Media, Haymarket Media, Incisive Media, and Advantage Business Media.
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About the Author, Dean Takahashi
Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.