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.

In a press statement Mark Josephson, president of Seevast, Pulse 360′s parent company, said, “Each week, Pulse 360 expands with new publishers. Our network continues to grow and our advertisers continue to reach more customers.”

The agreement will allow Pulse 360 to distribute content-targeted sponsored link advertisements on a new website to be launched by Q-Phrase. Within the new website, students and academics will have access to research and analysis tools that can hold a large range of Web and local content.

The Q-Phrase website will also offer collaboration features so that teamwork on group projects and event organization is possible. Notes can be posted on the website by its users on community-specific virtual bulletin boards. Pulse 360 links will have a presence on the website with their links based on topic categories.

Content-targeted sponsored link advertisements on Bloggerland, a new social networking website, will also be distributed by Pulse.

Still, as the aftershocks of the Google/YouTube union continue reverberating throughout the digital realm, changing company game left and right, other shifts are occurring just under the radar that have unleashed some of their own magnitude. One such notable overhaul is that of Kanoodle, the sponsored links pioneer that was restructured and refitted into a larger umbrella company now known as Seevast last year.

Under the Seevast tag lies a triumvirate of online-based entities that features not only the well-known Kanoodle brand, but domain rights management firm Moniker, and the newly formed Pulse 360. With this sea change, Kanoodle was remodeled as a PPC-based operation, with Pulse 360 carrying the sponsored links baton in the process.

While it might not have made the front page of the New York Times, the Seevast makeover does have some significant implications for the online marketing industry moving forward. Recently, ADOTAS chatted with Seevast CEO Lance Podell (pictured), an industry vet with 18 years behind him working in the trenches with innovators like Sprinks as well as the first incarnations of several interactive agencies.

Erudite and straightforward at the same time, Podell sheds light on his company’s big move, the hurdles to selling the new name, the well-traveled path that led him here, and how Seevast has positioned itself in the video-centric new year.

Hi Lance, so let’s first discuss your industry background.

I went to Lafayette College and when I graduated college, I went into the ad agency business. I grew up on blue-chip accounts primarily at Chiat Day. I had worked at agencies and I worked at publishing firms, so I had worked at Chiat Day and worked at Conde Nast, skipping a few things. But then I went back to Harvard Business School after about four years out of college. In school, I made the decision that I really wanted to get into marketing consulting and looking at products outside-of-the-box.

It was interesting timing, it was 1990 when I went back to school. In ’92, loyalty marketing programs were hot and I ended up going to Digitas out of college, which wasn’t Digitas then, it was Bronner Slosberg Humphrey. I ended up going there to trot out other businesses that their clients might create. So, I worked with Disney on figuring out if they built the Disney Institute, would people come. I worked on Quaker products building their first loyalty programs, worked on the precursor to AT&T’s “True Rewards.”

Then, I moved back to New York and went to work for Ogilvy in their first interactive marketing group, the first iteration of that out of the direct group back then. [We] put American Express “Express Net” up on AOL, which was American Express’s first venture online, and back then there wasn’t the Web. That meant it was the first place you could transact online. We also built the first microsites online, so we got Fodor’s and Frommer’s to contribute content to the Express Net site on AOL.

Then, as you probably recall, content was king. I went back to the publishing side of the house, and I went to Time, Inc., where I worked on all of the opportunities for the Time, Inc. online properties. That was really fun until distribution became king, and then I went to US West and worked on interactive television. So, I guess the theme here is I had spent the majority of my career on the advertising and publishing sides of the house, which is a good entrée to where I am now. I built PCH.com for Publisher’s Clearinghouse, and then went to Shopping.com when it was DealTime as the chief marketing officer.

At that point, I had connected the dots between all things advertising and all things publishing, meaning the first time I was in a real referral-based business—where you were leading consumers via the advertiser to the published page—from there I ended up at Sprinks. Again, for about the last 7 or 8 years, I’ve been working on referral-based ad business. So I’ve had a long history at advertising, agencies, publishing firms, and with that, came the logical conclusion that I should be running an ad network that was based on the advertisers and publishers.

As a content-targeted sponsored link network, Pulse 360 has added more than 10,000 publishers to its network in 2006, with MSN and the Dow Jones Online Network representing a few of the 2006 additions.

In a statement, Seevast CEO Lance Podell affirmed, “we have added more than 10,000 publishers to our network in 2006, including some of the Web’s best like The Wall Street Journal and other sites of the Dow Jones Online Network”. Other partnerships that Pulse 360 continues to build on include USATODAY.com, more than 30 sites of the CBS Television Stations Group, more than 75 CBS Radio sites, NASCAR.com, Autobytel.com, and more.

General Partner of TheOnlineInvestor.com Ted Allrich added that “our relationship with Pulse 360 will help us ensure our customers are being served highly relevant ads that are optimized based on our key demographics. Pulse 360′s listings are optimized across context, behavior, local and demographic targeting, which makes the most sense for our site.”

“The consumer audience is watching videos online,” said Seevast CEO Lance Podell in a statement. “Advertisers can now reach their audience in this highly desirable space, and publishers can add another way to monetize their content in a way that’s non-invasive to viewers.” Research firm eMarketer says that the online video ad market could be worth $3 billion by 2010.

Just like Pulse’s text link ads, the video ads can be targeted by context, website localization, user location, user behavior or demographic.

Pulse 360 was previously part of the Kanoodle pay-per-click search advertising network, another company currently under the Seevast brand. Pulse’s current clients include Fox.com, MSN, MSNBC, and the Wall Street Journal Online.

“We are delighted to bring this new benefit to our current and future publishers,” said Linkstorm CEO David Sidman in a statement. “Now publishers will be able to use their Linkstorm menus to create new, highly targeted ad inventory.” The Linkstorm partnership is part of Pulse 360′s current distribution policy.

The Pulse 360 sponsored links featured in each Linkstorm rollover will be targeted contextually using the same technology that Linkstorm uses to create its menus. Linkstorm’s service is used for site navigation, advertising and to increase search engine ranking. Pulse 360 is a subsidiary of Seevast Corp, the same company that owns the Kanoodle PPC SEM service.