In a press statement, 24/7 Product Manager of Publisher Solutions Ali C. Mirian said, “24/7 Real Media has been serving mobile ads via its Open AdStream platform since 1999, which gives us a tremendous amount of insight into the evolving needs of mobile marketers. This has enabled us to build features and capabilities into our industry-leading ad management platform that proprietary mobile ad servers cannot match. With Open AdStream Mobile Edition, 24/7 Real Media is giving marketers true multi-channel campaign management, with one reliable, flexible and scalable platform.”

According to 24/7, Open AdStream Mobile is also easy to use with other major mobile ad protocols and allows simple additions of mobile ads to marketing campaigns. 24/7 Real Media plans to update the service in conjunction with industry evolution, including plans to develop the product with targeting parameters and advanced, integrated analytics. With this new service, though, the company claims that advertisers no longer need to go through the step-by-step process of installing, purchasing, and dealing with complications of stand-alone technology.

Oleg Vishnepolsky, 24/7 Chief Technology Officer, added, “Marketers and content providers are rushing to understand this new medium in order to deliver relevant advertising messages. We’ve seen drastic shifts in consumer behavior before; from network TV to Cable, print to online, and now online to mobile. Our job as a technology company is to stay ahead of these changes, allowing marketers to better understand and reach today’s mobile audience across all channels and devices.”

While Google has branched off into numerous other Internet technologies ranging from Gmail to maps, their core strength and primary focus has remained search technology and contextual advertising. This focus has led Google to grow from a few guys in a garage to a corporate giant with a $138 billion market cap.

In the hyper-fast-paced world of Internet technology, however, competition can cause giants to fall at the same speed that it produces new millionaires from the next “I’ve got a sweet office in my garage” genius. While Google has clearly established their dominance over contextual advertising they are facing new competition from smaller ad networks like Quigo and Industry Brains among others. At the same time they are trying to extend their dominance into the offline advertising world. As a result, Google finds itself fighting battles on two fronts.

On the Internet side, Google is facing increasing competition from smaller ‘transparent’ ad networks. In a transparent network, advertisers can place ads on specific publisher Websites and publishers have the ability to control who is advertising on their Website. The key is the flexibility and control given to the publisher and to the advertiser.

At issue is the fact that a growing number of publishers want unfiltered control over who advertises on their Website. High profile sites will strong traffic volume are beginning to command this and companies like Quigo are there to serve them. While Google is beginning to offer limited transparency they will have a hard time providing the necessary tools and flexibility because this isn’t a case of technology — this is a case of culture.

Giving up control is not a phrase that you will find anywhere in Google’s mission statement. However, with the emergence of transparent ad networks that is exactly the kind of strategic decision that Google finds itself wrestling with.

Over the past year, a number of articles have been written about smaller ad networks that have begun to challenge Google’s dominance. The NY Times, USA Today and Business Week, just to name a few, have all published stories related to the growing competition for contextual ad market that generated $2 billion in 2006.

While Google is ready and waiting to take on anyone who challenges them on their home turf of Internet advertising, they are simultaneously mounting a new offensive trying to force their way into TV, radio and print ad sales, and they’re finding quite a bit of resistance.

Regarding PVN, Lance D. Podell, CEO of Pulse 360 parent Seevast, said in a statement, “Leading publishers must realize that they are at a competitive disadvantage because a networks are controlling significant amounts of inventory in their core vertical, taking a greater share of advertising dollars. Inventory equals opportunity. Today, ad networks like Google’s AdSense can represent the largest amount of inventory in any given vertical segment, not the generally recognized large publisher.”

Thourh PVN, publishers will be allowed combine their smaller sites within a branded ad network. Publishers can also represent this inventory as well as syndicate content, boost revenue, and gain instant access to inventory that serves advertisers while driving traffic.

Podell added that Pulse 360 enables its publishers “…to take an aggressive stance against Google and other ad networks. He continued, “We’ve dedicated significant resources to develop a new way for publishers to effectively compete and, in the process, become the category leader in their vertical market by creating and controlling their own ad network.”

Pulse 360 claims that the Publisher Vertical Network can increase monetization, provide brand alignment and direct SEO opportunities. Podell says there are plans for expansion into a host of verticals in the near future.

Amp’d has been using Medio’s ad-powered software for mobile web searches since February, but Medio’s new pay-per-call-based system will track user behavior and click-through history to target ads. “Pay Per Call is aligned with our vision because it surfaces specific content — in this case, the phone number of a relevant merchant, like a taxi or locksmith service — and gives the mobile consumer immediate access to that advertiser with a click of a button, no cell-phone Web surfing required,” said Omar Tawakol, Medio’s chief advertising officer in a statement.

Medio is focused on providing search ads, but the network will also include mobile website banners. Revenue will be shared both with the mobile carrier and with a website’s publisher.

The company has enlisted former MSN national sales director Gary Bembridge to lead the project. Medio says it will announce more details, including advertising partners, in the next three months.

Verizon and T-Mobile also use Medio’s search service, which can be independently re-branded to reflect the carrier. Competition includes Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, who have recently entered the mobile arena.

While ContextWeb’s new “Open PO” system has already been running on several top performing websites like the Boston Herald and Weather Underground, the company has now opened that system up to any website that generates more than 10 million impressions per month.

“Advertisers and publishers both need the ability to control pricing—it is high time advertising networks begin to shoulder the risk of making the right match between buyer and seller instead of pushing this risk off onto the web publishing community,” said ContextWeb CEO Anand Subramanian in a statement. “The voice of the publisher should matter—when advertisers set their own price why can’t the publishers?”

ContextWeb says its new system will let publishers sell an unlimited amount of media at the CPM they designate. That, coupled with the ContextAd contextual system that can adapt to each individual web page, could effectively give ContextWeb a much more potent offering than the old system.

Quigo’s newest partner, Forbes.com, one of the leading online business news and lifestyle media publishers, has just signed a multi-year deal that will place contextual ads powered by Quigo’s AdSonar platform on all Forbes.com websites.

The name of Quigo’s game is control and transparency. While advertisers using Google’s AdWords or Yahoo’s Overture have little say in how their ads are placed, Quigo encourages publishers to develop their own advertiser relationships and offers the ability to target ads by category, location, specific site, or even specific web page, all on an auction basis.

Quigo controls less than 10% of the contextual advertising market, but it has focused on signing up recognizable brands. Over the past few months, Quigo has signed deals with publishers like ESPN.com, the Cox Newspaper group, and FoxNews.com.

“The AdSonar platform, technology and approach will help Forbes.com optimize revenues across our business news and lifestyle pages while also enabling us to build a strategic asset in one of the most dynamic and fastest growing segments of the online advertising market,” said Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller in a statement.

As the profit margin for general interest (horizontal) ad networks gets smaller, I predict they will move to an Ad Exchange model that will play to their strength and expertise in remnant inventory. As 2006 proved to the industry, ad exchanges are no longer sketchy business models and can provide a significant value for publishers selling remnant or second or third-tier inventory.

But the ad exchange model presents general interest ad networks with a chicken and egg dilemma: how they can get the most number of publishers and advertisers to use their exchange (which one is more important the publisher or the advertiser) and how to create the best common ground for the two. It would come as no surprise to me if established traditional exchange giants such as eBay join the ad exchange game.

Online video will present contextual ad networks with the opportunity to move beyond textual content and take on the challenging task of understanding and monetizing video content. It will be a rat race with a big prize of becoming the “AdSense for Video.” Though Google is the prime candidate to win the race, it is by no means a trivial task with a set winner.

2006 saw the rise of a new breed of advertising network as vertical ad networks proved they can help brand marketers fill the large void left by general interest horizontal ad networks and present an attractive alternative to the brand-name web properties and large portal ad buys. In 2007 as the branding TV dollars continue the shift to online, vertical ad networks could capture the lion’s share of it by focusing on their core strengths of brand protection, brand engagement, transparency and helping brand marketers connect with their high composition audiences. The key for vertical ad networks in 2007 is to continue demonstrate to marketers that they attract highly targeted, affluent audiences as well if not better than the free standing brand-name sites and portals.

With the enormous pressure behind social networking sites to monetize their reach, behavioral ad networks have a great opportunity to prove their value proposition by segmenting these trendy target audiences into ad packages that both sales reps and media buyers can understand and feel safe with. The key battle will remain the same and that is who can cookie the most sites through strategic partnerships.

With the latest addition of Verizon Wireless to the mobile bandwagon, 2007 is shaping up to be a make or break year for a number of new and existing mobile ad network start ups. With the release of Windows Mobile and the continued adaptation by mainstream users, this will be the year when there will be sufficient mobile ad inventory for the medium to have a chance to prove its value. There will be lots of test mobile ad buys but whether they will translate into value for marketers will depend on how consumer’s react to ads on their mobile devices and if providers can deliver enough reach to become real competition to other proven ad media.

As online ad inventory continues to move from textual and web space to all forms of the digital medium, ad networks will continue to play an ever more significant role in our industry and as each newly established platforms go through their maturing process and new and better ways of monetizing them is discovered, we will continue to see both the evolution of ad networks as well as the birth of new ad networks that present real value for online marketers.

“We are excited to partner with WSJ.com to deliver relevant, business-focused advertising on its search page results,” said Business.com CEO Jake Winebaum in a statement. “The addition of WSJ.com to our growing advertising network provides our advertisers access to top business decision-makers.”

Business.com’s network only caters to those offering B2B products and services. Ads are displayed on both the Business.com website and throughout the company’s ad network, which already includes 100 other online business sites like Forbes, BusinessWeek and the Financial Times.

The Wall Street Journal Online is a subscription-only news website with about 811,000 subscribers as of the end of 2006.

The Business.com network reaches about 30 million users per month. “We selected Business.com because of their exclusive business-to-business focus and their ability to deliver the most relevant advertising content for our users,” added Dow Jones Online president Gordon McLeod.

Now that we’re almost halfway through Q1 2007, ADOTAS decided to catch up with the goings-on at Quigo by chatting with its Chief Revenue Officer Henry Vogel, a former eBay exec who left the sunny West coast for the brights lights and big city action of New York. Through in-person chats, phone conversations and email communique, Vogel provides plenty of insight by not only tracing his career path, but the AdSonar infrastructure, its competitive advantages , as well as some surprising 2007 forecasts for the online advertising industry.

Hi Henry, so how did you land at Quigo?

Prior to joining Quigo in January 2006, I was at eBay looking after Internet Marketing and Business Development. Quigo was a partner of ours, but the more personal introduction and connection to Quigo came when Marty Abbott — the former CTO of eBay and a colleague of mine — joined in 2005.

What attracted you to Quigo?

I’m excited and passionate about high growth, technology-enabled consumer businesses. And although I left my heart in San Francisco, I got excited about what Quigo was doing, the team that Mike Yavonditte, our CEO, was building and the opportunity to be part of a company with huge upside. Without sounding too hyperbolic, I truly believe we’re in the middle of an advertising revolution, perhaps even only in the second or third innings. And I believe Quigo’s team, technology and approach can have a significant impact on the shape of that revolution.

Quigo seems to be on a hot streak having landed in short succession ESPN, CareerBuilder.com, Fodors.com. The Daily News and the Internet Broadcasting network of sites. What’s going on, why would CNN ask if Quigo is the next Google?

That was a very flattering assessment of Quigo’s future potential. While obviously not wanting to take anything for granted, we’re certainly pleased by the market reception our approach to performance marketing has received. Let’s face it; there are all kinds of way to advertise on the Internet now. I think Quigo is gaining momentum because our ad network, technology and approach offer distinct advantages for both publishers and advertisers. Put simply, I think we offer one of the most dynamic and fast-growing segments of advertising – a better mousetrap. Our premium properties and transparent approach provides advertisers with the ability to target their performance ads on some of the web’s best-known brands. For publishers we make them more money and help them own relationships with their advertisers, which gives them a strategic asset instead of just a one-time check.

Exactly what is auction-based, pay-per-click advertising and how does it differ from search or contextual placement on a given site?

Most advertisers are familiar with bidding on keywords with the search providers like Google and Yahoo!. Our bidding process is not all that different with the exception that we offer a lot more transparency. Advertisers can target nationally or locally, and bid for specific sites, individual pages or sections within those sites, and topics or keywords that are most relevant to their product or service offering. They know exactly where their ads will run and only pay when users click on their ads and come to their sites. As such, they can fully optimize their returns at a very granular level, and also gain the brand-building benefits from having their ads appear on premium websites that are most relevant to their audience.

Since advertisers can buy against keywords or bid on specific page placements across multiple sites, how is Quigo different from a contextual network like Burst or 24/7 Real Media?

That’s a great question. In many respects it gets to the heart of our approach as we’re blending the benefits of a traditional media buy with the benefits of content-targeting and pay-for-performance marketing. Traditional ad networks sell blocks of inventory, typically on a CPM basis and with varying degrees of control and assurance over placements. With Quigo, advertisers have total control of where and when their ads will appear. They know that their ad won’t end up in the backwaters of some off brand site they’ve never heard of that might be counted by an ad network as a served impression. And, 100% of our inventory is priced on a performance basis.

The Precision Network is currently in beta and exists alongside MIVA’s existing Core Network. While the Core Network will provide broad ad distribution, the Precision Network will only focus on a few specific vertical categories.

Advertisers will be able to use a combination of both Core and Precision. “As the Pay-Per-Click market continues to mature, we believe there will be increasing demand amongst advertisers for both horizontal and vertical networks,” said MIVA CEO Peter Corrao in a statement. “The new Network is designed to provide lower volume, higher value leads to advertisers; while our Core Network will continue to provide a higher volume of leads at a lower cost.” US verticals covered by Precision includes 18 vertical markets, while UK coverage will start smaller with 5.

To promote the launch, MIVA is providing advertisers with a team of experts to help them determine the most effective ways to make use of the different categories. Both the new and old networks can be managed through MIVA’s AdCenter dashboard utility.