Advertising and online commerce are the hottest markets for startups, so of course TC50 has some companies in this segment. This group includes; Burt, Adgregate Markets, AdRocket, and OtherInbox.
The TechCrunch expert panel for this group is Marc Andreessen (Netscape), Marc Benioff, (Salesforce.com) Dan Farber (CNet), Yossi Vardi (Angel Investor), and Ash Patel (Yahoo).
Burt (CopyBox)Technology that inspires people to have better and more creative ideas, initially focusing on enabling ad agencies to create more intelligent and entertaining digital campaigns. Burt is like PhotoShop for the ad campaign director. The company’s first product suite centers around the concept of leveraging mined data to mass-customize how ads look and behave, responding to the urgent need for publishers to better monetize their data, and for advertisers to increase the visibility and impact of their digital campaigns. Burt offers a simple, convenient and predictable way for agencies to create sophisticated campaigns for almost any digital channel - including web, IPTV, mobile and video-games - where ads are tailored for each individual viewer.
Problem/Solution - Targeted advertising campaigns
Business Model - Advertising
Possible Competitors - ??
Adgregate Markets Transforms online display ads into e-commerce markets. Adgregate Markets is changing the dynamic of traditional banner advertising by aggregating micro-markets through fully transactional banner widgets. ShopAds(tm) widget provides advertisers with fully contained micro-stores where consumers can engage with merchants within the confines of their trusted sites. Traditional banner advertising is built on the hope of converting eyeballs into clicks that require consumers to transact on merchant sites. Rampant banner blindness has increasingly diminished the results of marketers' efforts.
Problem/Solution - Banner ads that work like clickable commerce ads
Business Model - Percent of product sales
Possible Competitors - ??
AdRocket An ad targeting network for email. There are over 1 billion email users and many billions of monthly email newsletters sent to subscribers, yet the advertising in these newsletters is poorly targeted and largely ineffective. AdRocket fixes this by providing publisher's with individually relevant ads for email communications, websites or RSS. Based on non-personally identifiable interest data about the subscribers. Unlike 'cookies' which have a very short life, email creates much longer lasting, richer individual profiles.
Problem/Solution - Email advertising
Business Model - Advertising
Possible Competitors - Tecch??
OtherInbox A new way to manage email overload. You probably have an "other inbox" already, and it’s probably a Yahoo or Gmail account that you give out because you don't want receipts, newsletters and social networking notifications to clutter your main email. OtherInbox introduces a clever twist. Instead of just having a single email address such as Johnsmith23@gmail.com, each user gets assigned their own domain name such as johnsmith.otherinbox.com or a vanity domain like johnsmith.com. Any address@johnsmith.com goes to your OtherInbox, so you can easily give a different email address to every website.
Problem/Solution - Manage email overload
Business Model - Advertising
Possible Competitors - Tecch??
TechCrunch Panel of Experts - Marc Andreessen (Netscape), Marc Benioff, (Salesforce.com) Dan Farber (CNet), Yossi Vardi (Angel Investor), and Ash Patel (Yahoo).
The panel's questions and observations;
- Feedback on Burt:
- Marc Andreessen- Ad agencies are notoriously averse to technology. Your technology is targeted at them. How will you overcome that? A: We put the UI in a browser so they should feel more comfortable.
- Chris DeWolfe- It will be hard to get the big advertisers to switch to your tools. The agencies all want to work with standard ad units. A: CopyBox is easy technology for ad agency people, and can be used in conjunction with existing tools.
- Ash Patel- Yahoo has something similar called SmartAds.
- Marc Benioff - It is a feature, not a company.
- Feedback on AdGregate Markets;
- DeWolfe - Great idea. It is important to use the standard ad unit size.
- Benioff - This supports a trend where Ads are becoming apps
- Patel - Others have tried this and failed. Scale is a big issue.
