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Advertising.com Sprinting — Can It Catch Up?

Written on: April 9th 2008
Author: by Kathleen |
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ADOTAS – The embattled AOL today announced that Platform-A’s Advertising.com is launching a Web-based, self-serve interface for publishers who want to join the Advertising.com network. the power and control of Advertising.com’s network and eliminates any high-tech hassle that may send some smaller shops running for the hills.

Publishers’ inventory will be optimized by Advertising.com’s AdLearn technology, the company said – and clients can also leverage Platform-A’s ad base and sales force.

“Until now, smaller publishers didn’t have a lot of options to receive CPM pricing for their display inventory,” Lynda Clarizio, president of Platform-A, said in a release. “PubAccess provides a scalable solution for the tens of thousands of quality publishers who want to join Advertising.com’s leading display ad network. Advertising.com continues to work hard to develop new products and monetization opportunities for the publisher community, and we are excited by the initial positive response we have received for PubAccess.”

The application extends Platform-A’s ongoing efforts to help publishers monetize their ad inventory.

Perhaps this launch signals brighter days for the embattled Platform-A, which has had more than its share of Sturm und Drang in recent months: Clarizio is the seventh president of Platform-A (her predecessor blew out after five months), but industry watchers are saying that she has the chops to lead the advertising force back into the light.

Then again, maybe it doesn’t. There are many detractors out there who say AOL’s advertising unit has been too ineffectual in the past to recover from its mistakes.

Some say Platform-A is on its last legs; fourth-quarter ad sales rose 10% to $620 million at AOL — about half the growth that ad sales teams saw industry-wide, the Interactive Advertising Bureau reports.

But don’t ring the funeral bells yet: After all, Advertising.com is responsible for about 29% of AOL’s interactive advertising sales in 2007.

Clarizio will have to sprint in the coming months to even come close to her competition. Can she do it? We shall see …