• Social enterprise software-maker Buddy Media has opened new offices in Singapore and San Francisco. Leading the Singapore office as the first Buddy Media Managing Director of Asia is Ken Mandel, previously regional vice president of advertising sales and marketplace for Yahoo! Asia Pacific. Heading up the San Fran depot is new Senior Vice President of Western Region (U.S.) Sales Carla Bourque, who boasts senior management experience at the likes of Six Apart (acquired by SAY Media), Nielsen Online, Catalina Marketing and Jupiter Media Metrix.

• Self-serve lead generation and targeted email marketing platform Marketfish has expanded its list acquisition service to direct mail campaigns with Marketfish Platform — Postal Edition.

• Multi-threat ad analytics service Adometry has introduced new optimization tools to its Ad Analytics SaaS Solution Suite that accounts for interactions between display and search that affect conversions in calculating optimization recommendations in accordance with campaign goals (e.g., branding, conversions).

• Web and mobile app publisher network Conduit will provide the 65 million uniques heading to online game website Miniclip with the Miniclip Gamebar, a toolbar the informs users of new and exclusive games as well as enabling sharing with other users.

• After surviving the initiation ritual, including battle with the rancor monster, data marketplace eXelate has been admitted to the ranks of the 12-member Council for Accountable Advertising, which was founded by Cross Commerce Media, MediaMath and TARGUSinfo in March of this year. By the way, the council could use another rancor monster if anybody has a source.

• Cross-platform rich media advertising firm Crisp Media has added 3D, video and animation capabilities to its fixed mobile unit Adhesion — these “sticky” ads stay above-the-fold as users scroll on their mobile devices. In addition, Crisp has also launched a version of the unit for the iPad.

• New MySpace owner Specific Media is planning to market the beleaguered social network as the “Hulu of Music.” Check out the pitch deck on SlideShare.

• Retail search engine and mobile app SaleLocator has introduced an API to offer web and mobile developers up-to-date in-store sales information for more than 1,000 national and regional retailers, including an average of 275,000 deals a day segmented by region and/or category.

• Email marketing provider GetResponse launched List Booster to allow clients to import contacts from 16 different services and mail clients, including Gmail, Outlook and LinkedIn.

• Oh yeah, I think Apple had some kind of announcement. Anybody catch it?

It’s not the first time a publisher has openly rejected the use of ad networks, which are sometimes considered a necessary evil for publishers that can’t sell all of their inventory. (After all, some revenue is better than none.) ESPN, Weather.com, Turner Networks, Forbes and Gawker have been very vocal about their refusal to do business with them, noting that they can greatly devalue inventory and create channel conflicts.

But as consumers’ media consumption becomes even more fragmented, single-domain publishers are finding it more difficult to provide adequate reach to advertisers, both in quantity and quality. A website with just a few million unique visitors and no sophisticated behavioral or contextual targeting capabilities is all but invisible to big brand advertisers, who will just turn to ad networks to deliver large, targeted audiences for their campaigns.

So what’s a publisher to do?

The answer is simple: reject the ad network, not the ad network model.

Instead of feeling angry that your revenue is disappearing into the pockets of ad networks, and feeling tragically ignored by big brands, consider forming your own vertical ad network, using your domain as the core niche property and surrounding it with complementary websites.

By aggregating high quality, content-related inventory across a single network, you will strengthen the authority of your brand, extend the reach of your audience, and ultimately increase the value of your ad offerings — thus ramping up revenues and bringing your digital business to scale.

Here’s how to do it.

Build Your Ad Network: The Five Step Guide

1. Clarify your offering. Who are your primary visitors? What kinds of advertisers do you want to attract?

Let’s say your content is all about the sport of rock climbing. You could recruit other similar websites and form the Rock Climbing Network, or you could open it up to skiing, fly fishing, kayaking, etc. and create The Outdoor Enthusiast Network.

Whatever you choose, just make sure you are are clear about the audience and the exact value proposition.

2. Tee up a few “friendlies.” Identify some publishers in the space and initiate conversations with them about your concept for a network in your common vertical.

Get verbal agreements that they will follow through on the idea, should you succeed in bringing in the right amount of desired advertisers. Then create a larger list of possible partners of about 20 additional sites that you plan on including in your outreach.

3. Choose a network management platform. To efficiently manage all of the moving pieces in your network, you’re going to need to license a network technology. In the past year, the number of available platforms has nearly doubled; there are now more than a dozen providers to choose from.

While you might be tempted to make your choice based on a personal recommendation, or pick the first one that seems to fit the criteria, it’s better to carefully research all of the options and select the platform that will satisfy both your short-term and long-term needs.

Don’t know where to start? See a shortlist of platforms.

4. Develop a set of unique ad products. Why should an advertiser work with you, over a bigger ad network? A smaller network maintains a close connection with its sites and fully understands its evolving audience, so it can be more creative with ad offerings and can execute higher impact campaigns.

The Rock Climbing Network could, for instance, support a contest sponsored by a climbing gear company on the homepages of its member sites, asking readers to share stories of their most treacherous climb. REI could participate in a series of product reviews that link back to their retail site.

Surely, these offerings beat buying five million untargeted banner ads from an ad network with 10,000 sites.

5. Scale the business. Invest in the most important resources: a solution for publisher outreach and your ad sales and operations team. You can’t build a network without publisher partners, and you can’t make those big advertisers you’ve just landed happy unless everything is running smoothly.

The best way to steadily increase your revenue stream is to ensure advertiser renewals. Before you know it, you’ll be able to toss out the big ad networks completely — and start to realize your inventory’s true potential.

The network is nearly sold out of inventory and is approaching $30 million in ad revenue for its web video that allows fans to live stream the 60-plus tournament games it televises, with about two weeks to go before the start of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. The revenue will definitely see an increase “well north of 20 percent more” than last year’s record $23 million, according to Mediaweek.

The quality of the inventory and size of the audience has combined to make it an easy web buy for advertisers. AT&T, Coke and Pontiac are sponsors. A record 4.7 million unique viewers live streamed the games last year. CBS does not anticipate extended wait periods for users looking to access live games because of heavy demand this year.

For the at-work-slackers, there will be “boss button” – which enables viewers to display a fake spreadsheet on their screens with a click of the mouse.

Current advertisers, like Converse and Motorola, can incorporate ad messages that move to the beat of the music and serve maps that offer concert listings. Companies can also target users with demographic or psychographic technology.

UpTrend Media was responsible for the re-design. Worldwide, 18 million songs are played on Last.fm a day and 19 million people use its widgets.

The deal would have Yahoo joining the other big dogs in the CBS Audience Network, including Google’s ever-powerful YouTube, Time Warner’s AOL and Microsoft’s MSN and other sites like Joost, Veoh and Bebo. With the Yahoo deal in place, the Audience Network will reach about 92% of the Web, carrying clips from CBS, CSTV and Showtime. The clips are ad-supported and the splits vary from outlet to outlet (in some cases, CBS keeps all of the revenue).

Yahoo and CBS already work together on other projects, notably the distribution of “60 Minutes” on Yahoo news – which reels in about 15 million video streams per week.

CBS’s network competitors tend to keep a tighter leash on where their content is seen.

CBS started offering games online for free three years ago in what almost seemed like an experiment to see how many people would watch online at work.

The response two years ago almost shut down the network’s servers. Revenues skyrocketed from $250,000 the year before (under the subscription model) to about $4 million from advertising alone, reports Globe and Mail.

The company said yesterday that it anticipates bringing in $23 million in ad revenue over the next few weeks alone. Ad space for the online broadcasts was also reported to be 95% sold old by late February.

CBS and the NCAA made a deal ten years ago which has allowed the network no restrictions on the digital rights to the games and how they could be exploited.
Jason Kint, SVP of CBSSports.com was quoted in G&M to say “We’re very fortunate that the rights with the NCAA, back when they were done in the late nineties, were all encompassing. The people in charge appreciated where this was headed.”

The network plans to break last year’s record of 1.4 million unique users.

The stations are syndicating local news widgets to blogs and hyper-local sites; the widgets will feature the top local headlines and images with links to video and text stories to the local CBS sites. The widget will include a banner display advertisement.

Owners of the sites that publish the CBS widgets will get a portion of the display advertising revenue. CBS will have an in-house department sell the banner ads. SyndiGO, a division of advertising network Seevast Corp., will recruit and manage the local blogs and social media networking sites will form the core of the ad network.

“The CBS Local Ad Network again positions our stations at the forefront of an unprecedented locally focused venture,” said Jonathan Leess, president and general manager, CBS Television Stations Digital Media Group. “After first setting the standard for local news coverage online, our stations now lead the effort to engage other local sites — and we invite them to share in the revenue. The CBS Local Ad Network also opens up exciting new avenues for our advertising partners to efficiently extend their reach to valued local audiences while associating themselves with our CBS brands and content.”

AT&T, Liberty Mutual Insurance and North Texas Honda Dealers are among the advertisers who have signed on to the advertising network.

When AOL’s stations are integrated into CBS’s operations, the company will drive ad sales for AOL’s 200 plus stations in addition to its 150 plus stations.

“CBS RADIO continues to invest in high-growth areas including internet streaming,” said Dan Mason, President and CEO, CBS RADIO. “We have been very clear about our goals in this area and teaming with AOL is a tremendous step forward in that regard. Couple that with years of progress building out our own streaming operations, and CBS RADIO is instantly positioned as the leader in the online radio space. A combined CBS RADIO/AOL Radio affords us vastly greater scale, as well as massive distribution for our brands. We look forward to all that we will now be able to offer our audiences and advertisers alike.”

Advertisers will be able to utilize CBS’s TargetSpot – the first end-to-end ad marketplace designed for streaming audio. The platform allows clients to create, buy and place their ad messages on streaming stations targeting listeners by station, location, listening preferences and demographics.

Ronning Lipset Radio, which has run AOL’s streaming ad inventory for about four years, will take on CBS’s online properties as well.

The network will include 29 of CBS’s owned and operated television stations, 144 of its radio stations and 183 affiliate stations according to Mediaweek. The network currently includes MSN, AOL, Bebo and Joost. Many of the titles that will feature full length streaming episodes will be available at the beginning of the 2007/2008 fall season.

Many local stations that are gaining the ability to allocate their own content onto the network will have exposure on a reported 90% of the web. Jonathan Leess, digital media group president and general manager of CBS Television Stations was quoted in Mediaweek to say, “Our collaboration with CBS Interactive represents another great leap forward in the evolution and continued growth of our TV stations’ digital media initiatives.”

The initiative will surely attract an increase in national brands, but local advertisers as well.

The former name SportsLine was last the remains of an acquisition back in 1997 where CBS launched head first into the dot-com craze and ramped up its online efforts. The buyout was completed in 2004.

It is a tough world in the sports business and CBS may be making an attempt at improving their competitive struggle against popular ESPN.com,  “This change will allow the community to continue to thrive as it always has–but with the added and more clear connection to the premiere sports broadcasting franchise in the industry,” Steve Snyder, COO for CBS Interactive.