Publishers Get Control of Ads

The founders of Flycast Communications are back, this time creating tools that enable small publishers to manage the ads that appear on their sites. The new venture, Adify, works with publishers to create vertical ad networks where the content owners directly interact with advertisers.

Advertisers sign up through a "self-service" form on the publisher's website, with Adify providing the infrastructure and reporting, and the publishers setting pricing and determining who gets to advertise on their site. Adify stays in the background and takes a 20 percent cut of the advertising revenue.

Publishers who may not have experience in setting ad rates or dealing with the large ad networks can choose Adify's suggested rates or set their own. For example, advertisers can sign up to appear on BikePortland.org through a storefront that gives options for sponsorship, CPM, or CPC ads.

Adify is targeting "long tail" niches by building community through direct communications between publishers, according to CEO Larry Braitman. He says the future of online advertising is not in monolithic networks, but in thousands of niche networks that are much closer to customers and community.

"Community of interest" based advertising will give publishers the opportunity to increase their revenue over slapping on some contextual advertising that may be of questionable relevance. Community members (be they supporters of a non-profit organization or readers of a blog) are much likely to buy from advertisers of their favorite sites than a mega-retailer on a generic portal.

The "verticalization" of ad networks, search engines and marketing, is clearly happening as Internet advertising has gotten too unwieldy to satisfy many publishers. This will create a need for a directory or search engine that specializes in discovering niche markets.