Larry Braitman, who created a hugely innovative advertising platform in the last boom called Flycast, has just launched a new company, an advertising management solution for content developers of various sizes. It’s called Adify and it’s sort of a "store front" solution that provides the tools to publishers to manage the many aspects of advertising. The company charges 20 percent of advertising revenue managed through the system. This could be a great solution for vloggers and blogger who want to manage their advertising but don’t want to give away as much as 50 percent of their revenue.
Adify presented at Web 2.0 last week in San Francisco. Here’s a story from ZDNet which reports that the presenter (presumably Larry) said that Adify would be like "one thousand John Battelles" – a reference to John’s quickly growing advertising network for bloggers called Federated Media. John, of course, was a co-host of the conference and presumably was flattered!
Federated Media, Adify and others are making it possible for content developers to monetize their content through these new sorts of advertising networks or "malls." Robert Scoble blogged about the new "content malls" or networks and the new opportunities for individual publishers. Check out the comments that followed his post.
Reeling in the Years: Check out this ancient report from 1999 about Flycast’s IPO. Oh, the good old days! Larry, it’s so awesome you’re back in the game.
MUST READ — The Big Issue Looming Over MySpace is Tasteless Commercialization, writes Wade Roush in the December issue of Technology Review, which just went online today. Wade takes a tough look at the direction of MySpace. He says that the issue of sexual predators has been managed and is overblown. What he sees is an out of control "marketing madhouse." He writes:
But MySpace’s venture into consumer marketing has gone far beyond traditional advertising. The site has given members the technological tools to "express themselves" by turning their own profiles into multimedia billboards for bands, movies, celebrities, and products. Think MTV plus user photos, bulletin boards, and instant messaging.
Editors’s Note: I took down my earlier link to the Michael Arrington post about downloading files from YouTube. He took down his original story. To find out what’s up with this, visit TechCrunch.
Adify
Larry Braitman
Online Video
MySpace
MIT
