Adotas » Grace Duggan

Weather Channel, Gigya Create Weather Widget

Grace Duggan — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:26:46 +0000

ADOTAS — The Weather Channel Interactive (TWCi), Inc. and Gigya, Inc. recently announced a partnership to create a weather-related widget. Billed as a “news/breaking weather widget,” the application’s strength lies in its accessibility, as it will be easily adaptable for profile pages on social networking sites, blogs and personal Web pages. Gigya, a widget distribution network, will design the widget to follow up-to-the-minute news and weather patterns, which could prove especially useful in terms of conditions like flooding, winter weather and tropical storms.

Said Morgan Harris, vice president of creative services at Gigya: “Our goal was to quickly deliver a user-friendly and full-featured widget so that people can get critical weather information wherever they spend their time online.”

Aside from the option of including the widget on their personal pages, individuals may also participate by uploading their own video reports as “Weather Warriors.” The Weather Channel may choose to air some of this footage on their network or online.

Cameron Clayton, TWCi’s vice president of business development, elaborated on the company’s desire to embrace this widget as another viable medium for delivering the news. “At The Weather Channel we strive to protect and inform, using every appropriate platform to communicate severe weather information,” Clayton said. “This new widget will give us another means of communicating vital, up-to-date news and weather information…hopefully making for a better informed public.”

TWCi owns a number of Web sites, including weather.com, the site for The Weather Channel, which more than 38 million different people access each month. This widget marks one more step in their media expansion, as they already offer users Desktop Weather and video, messaging and downloads for cell phones. Gigya reaches more 150 million people monthly. Gigya’s clients include MTV, Toyota, Wal-Mart and Levi’s.

Balihoo Launches Tool To Directly Connect Publishers, Advertisers

Grace Duggan — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:15:04 +0000

ADOTAS — Balihoo announced the launch of Balihoo Publisher Edition, a new Web-based tool designed to increase advertising productivity. Balihoo said it will augment the number of sales publishers make directly to interactive advertisers as well as to help buyers and sellers move past the media fragmentation gap and work with all different kinds of media, including print and online.

Balihoo Publisher Edition uses a publisher branded portal through which they can offer their inventory directly. Publishers can give their potential buyers advanced features to hone in on their particular advertising goals. These self-service features help both improve and increase direct sales efficiency, reach more media buyers and promote incremental sales from existing buyers. It’s also possible to set up segment-specific and cross-medium advertising bundles to improve sales and increase revenues.

Balihoo Publisher Edition builds on the Balihoo Agency Edition. Made available in June of last year, Balihoo Agency Edition allows media buyers to improve the buying process through research and planning tools.

Said Pete Gombert, CEO and founder of Balihoo: “We formed Balihoo and launched Balihoo Agency Edition over a year ago with the goal of bridging the media fragmentation gap between buyers and sellers that has completely disrupted the traditional ad-buying model…With today’s launch of Balihoo Publisher Edition, we’re moving toward closing the gap by providing media sellers with the tools they need to promote and sell the full breadth of their cross-medium advertising vehicle portfolio. Balihoo Publisher Edition provides publishers exactly what they need in these challenging media sales times by increasing revenues, decreasing overall cost-of-sales and providing significantly improved customer service to their media buying customers.”

Clickbooth Provides Exclusive Network to Top Publishers

Grace Duggan — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:33:52 +0000

ADOTAS — Clickbooth, the Florida-based CPA network founded by John Lemp in 2002, has spearheaded a unique approach toward high-level publishers: the aptly-named Exclusive Network. Clickbooth latched onto the idea about a year ago, Graham Gochneaur, Clickbooth’s vice president of marketing, said.

“We’ve seen the movement within the last few months of networks talking about being transparent and having exclusive relationships on the marketing side. We had to chuckle as we have had those same concepts in place for over a year now,” said Gochneaur.

This transparency seems to be one of the key benefits for publishers lucky enough to even qualify for the Exclusive Network, an invitation-only service. Clickbooth advertisers have full transparency, along with the greatest volume of publishers working on their offers on the network. Additional pros abound: these publishers receive access to otherwise unavailable offers, they can test drive the latest marketing strategies, and they also enjoy the combination of slimmer margins and highest possible payout.

“Because of our exclusive channels on the distribution side we have been able to amass huge amounts of data and analyze trends and themes much faster than our competitors. The free flow of communication from the front lines to the back is efficient and effortless. We in turn take this data, analyze it and maximize the process of each transaction made online through the Clickbooth Network,” said Gochneaur. “Publishers love it because it guarantees that they are always running the hottest offers at the highest payouts, and advertisers love it because they are gaining access to the exclusive distribution channels that their competitors can’t.”

Clickbooth is the core subsidiary of IntegraClick, Inc.