Re: Ad server options

From: Joshua Novick <jnovick_at_i-network.com>
Date: Fri 17 Aug 2001 11:32:25 -0500

ROSS LARNER <ross_at_onemedia.com> WROTE:

>I am interested in finding out what options there are
>for serving ads on-line. We currently use DoubleClick,
>but we're hoping to find a cheaper alternative without
>losing performance, or ad serving options. Any ideas?

Ross, my company, I-Network, is a Spanish Ad sales house
that serves various hundred of millions ads per month.
in the past 4 years my company had the experience of
working with 4 different ad serving solutions:
 RealMedia, Engage Accipiter, AdForce, and Doubleclick.
Our experience, to the date, is that Dart is by far
the most complete solution, being the only one of the
4 we tried that provides precise inventory management,
deals efficiently with rich media, pop ups, interstitials,
layers, etc..., and rarely under serves or over serves.

Our company migrated from Dart to Adforce a couple months
ago, when Adforce shut down. Adforce crisis was an economic
and logistic disaster for us: many of our the campaigns in
the last few months did not run properly, where under
delivered, improperly targeted, or simply did not run. My
advise is that you stick with Dart, if you can afford it.
Maybe you could try to renegotiate your deal with them,
prices on ad serving have fallen considerably in the past
year or so, maybe you just have a "old days" contract. If
you chose to change ad serving solution I would advise you
to take into great consideration the future viability of
your new software provider. Of the ones out there, only
L90 and DoubleClick seem to have enough cash at bank to be
around one year from now.

You might want to take a look at L90 Admonitor. We where
very impressed with the capabilities it provided, and the
main reason we decided to sign with Dart rather than with
Admonitor, was their lack of good ip targeting database
for Spanish users, and Doubleclicks stronger presence
and local support in Spain.

What you might want to also think about reducing the number
of pages you serve ads on, if you are so worried about costs.
What we found is that a great part of our inventory was
unsold and the cost of hundred of millions of house ads was
a luxury we could no longer permit ourselves. You might want
to "re-program" your site in a manner that it is easier to
place Dart ads only when you are serving a campaign and serve
house ads with a simple banner cgi script, when a paid
campaign isn't running.

Joshua Novick
http://www.i-network.com
http:///www.correodirect.com



Received on Fri Aug 17 2001 - 11:32:25 CDT