NEW YORK – ContextWeb, Inc., operator of the ADSDAQ Ad Exchange, the leading independent ad exchange, announced a new partnership that enables PubMatic’s clients to sell ad inventory on the ADSDAQ Ad Exchange in real time. The new agreement enables all publishers that leverage PubMatic’s yield optimization solution to sell ad inventory on the ADSDAQ Ad Exchange via real-time bidding.

PubMatic sellers such as TVGuide.com, The Huffington Post and Fast Company now gain access to all of the quality advertisers that buy ad inventory on the ADSDAQ Ad Exchange. In turn, buyers on the ADSDAQ exchange gain access to a greater range of quality inventory at market-driven prices.

“Our clients demand quality advertisers,” said PubMatic CEO Rajeev Goel. “That’s what the ADSDAQ Ad Exchange gives them. We’re pleased to offer our publishers real-time access to ADSDAQ’s buyers, and to the increased revenues and control that will result from that greater pool.”

“Our partnership with PubMatic underscores the continued growth of the ADSDAQ Ad Exchange’s ecosystem of more than 12,000 integrated buyers, sellers and targeting partners,” said Jay Sears, EVP of the ADSDAQ Ad Exchange. “Our exchange matches, in real-time, quality advertisers with ad sellers from PubMatic to deliver highly targeted and contextual relevant ads to consumers.”

PubMatic’s Ad Revenue Optimization solution combines real-time ad decision technology with local service around the world to provide global publishers a holistic ad monetization platform. By integrating to the ADSDAQ Ad Exchange, PubMatic ad sellers now have real-time access to more ad buyers than ever before.

About PubMatic

PubMatic’s ad monetization and management solution combines impression-level ad auction technology, the most comprehensive brand protection tools, and enterprise ad operations support to give the Web’s premium publishers the most control over their revenue and brand.

PubMatic has seven offices around the world in the US, Europe, and Asia.

Some of the world’s most respected online publishers have chosen to work with PubMatic, including The Huffington Post, eBay, United Online, TV Guide, and the majority of the comScore Top 10. http://www.PubMatic.com

About ContextWeb, Inc.

ContextWeb operates the ADSDAQ Ad Exchange—the only online ad exchange where advertisers and publishers both enjoy complete control. The ADSDAQ Ad Exchange places every kind of interactive ad unit for more than 12,000 buyers and sellers every day. Using page-level, contextual technology the ADSDAQ Ad Exchange delivers category-specific, brand-safe inventory along with extensive in-category reach, all with a purchase comparable to a site or portal buy. The ADSDAQ Ad Exchange ranks among the top 15 ad-supported properties, according to comScore, reaching 143 million monthly unique visitors. ContextWeb, Inc.’s investors include leading venture capital firms Draper Fisher Jurvetson (“DFJ”), DFJ Gotham Ventures, DFJ New England, Updata Partners and Investor Growth Capital. For more information, please visit: www.contextweb.com.

Publishers are now able to block specified ad types throughout their account (i.e. any and all ad tags associated to their account). As per ADSDAQ’s instructions, log into your publisher account and click on the My Account section at the top. There you will see a “Block Ads By Type” tab. Click on it to see the list of ad types that you can block. For a more detailed description of each ad type, simply hold your mouse over the ad type name to see more information. Please note that these ad types are subject to change and the list you see in your account will always be the most up-to-date list.

While this is a powerful tool, please keep in mind that ad blocking, if used liberally, can be a double-edged sword. Blocking a large number of ad types can result in a much lower fill rate. It is recommended to block the absolute minimum number of ad types that you must.

To find out more about ADSDAQ’s ad blocking feature, please refer to the Ad Blocking Fact Sheet [PDF].

RESTON, VA – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world today reported the top 25 ad networks based on their reach among U.S. Internet users in April 2009. The ranking showed that AOL’s Platform-A remains the top ad network, reaching nearly 176.5 million U.S. Internet users, or 91.5 percent of the total audience, followed by Yahoo! Network (167.1 million) and Google Ad Network (164.5 million). New ad network FOX Audience Network ranked sixth, reaching 149.2 million people. Several ad networks in the top 25 achieved double-digit growth during the past year, led by Turn Inc. (up 121 percent), CPX Interactive (up 88 percent) and 24/7 Real Media (up 48 percent).

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Top 25 Ad Networks

April 2009 vs. April 2008

Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations

Source: comScore Media Metrix

Total Unique Visitors (000)
Apr-2008        Apr-2009       % Change

Total Internet: Total Audience          190,728         192,875           1

Platform-A                              170,508         176,455           3
Yahoo! Network                          160,206         167,129           4
Google Ad Network                       155,882         164,518           6
ValueClick Networks                     140,930         160,307          14
Specific Media                          144,773         158,012           9
FOX Audience Network                        N/A         149,249         N/A
24/7 Real Media                          99,959         147,668          48
Traffic Marketplace                     114,682         143,519          25
Microsoft Media Network US              119,595         139,674          17
Tribal Fusion                           135,113         138,274           2
Casale Media – MediaNet                 127,184         137,884           8
interCLICK                              107,961         134,834          25
Turn, Inc                                60,617         134,028         121
Adconion Media Group                    117,965         133,498          13
CPX Interactive                          69,178         130,370          88
Collective Network by Collective Media   88,279         129,808          47
ADSDAQ by ContextWeb                     93,815         123,534          32
AudienceScience (formerly Revenue Science)  N/A         121,001         N/A
Burst Media                              89,670         116,727          30
Undertone Networks                       72,940          97,053          33
AdBrite                                  81,838          91,033          11
Pulse 360                                   N/A          82,574         N/A
Vibrant Media                            72,351          80,779          12
Adify                                       N/A          73,467         N/A
Kontera                                  52,159          72,870          40
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“Underscoring the growing importance of ad networks to the digital advertising economy, each of the top 25 ad networks has expanded its reach during the past year,” commented Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president. “It almost seems that new ad networks are emerging every day, each aimed at helping advertisers achieve their campaign objectives, whether it’s to deliver reach and frequency or to target a specific audience segment.”

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

What is In-Text Advertising?

In-text advertising is a form of contextual advertising where specific words within a body of content are matched with relevant advertising content. Publishers use In-text advertising as an incremental revenue opportunity in addition to serving standard ad banner units.

How ContextWeb In-Text Advertising works

Jay Sears clarifies how the newly launching platform works: “ContextWeb publishers participating in the In-text program will see specific keywords double underlined within their content. Upon mouse-over of the keyword, the end-user will have the option to see and click on ads. The ads are specifically relevant to the keyword that has been double underlined, which enables advertisers to be precise in their targeting. As a publisher, you will be able to name a CPC AskPrice for all the in-text ads served to your account. No additional tagging or integration is required. ”

How to Participate

Self serve publishers on the ADSDAQ Exchange Selling Desk will be set to automatically serve In-text ads beginning March 31, 2009. Publishers can opt-out of In-text ads at any time.

Advertisers running on the ADSDAQ Exchange Buying Desk will be notified automatically once the program is open. Agency clients wishing to participate should express interest to their ContextWeb sales representative.

More details are given here, on the ContextWeb blog.

The network claims to be able to help you improve your site’s monetization significantly over what you’re usually getting from other ad networks. The Google AdSense program is repeatedly mentioned as a known low-paying alternative, and ADSDAQ markets themselves as the little guy’s better alternative.

Fine. I start the registration sign-up and after a few screens, I’m prompted with the following mindblowing graphic, showing the business plan of these people is based on the assumption that your puny little site is only making $0.50 CPM.

At this point, I wonder if there’s any point continuing the registration process. Without going into any details on what eCPM I make from my sites through AdSense, I guess you will agree that $0.50 is a joke. Any half-decent site can do much, much better than this. In fact, such low CPMs can only be expected from sites that are smart priced or extremely poorly optimized in terms of ad placements, something that ADSDAQ shouldn’t automatically assume about all sites that are signing up.

Still, I continue the registration, thinking that I’ll decide later what CPM to ask for. At the very last stage of the registration, in the tags generation section, here’s what pops up: ‘Put Ad Tags on pages that receive traffic from the United States. Non-US impressions will be sent to your Backup Tags until they are supported in the future.‘ This was the point where I abandoned the screen and will never go back. To be told only after having completed the registration and after having entered contact and site details into their system that I’ll be doing a bit more than $0.50 CPM for US traffic – that was the biggest joke of all.

To conclude, I should have known better. I should have known that no ad networks tailored to smaller publishers are seriously thinking and able to monetize anything else but porn, warez, link farming sites and the likes. For the small publisher with quality sites there’s pretty much no other choice than staying with Google AdSense until the traffic builds up to be able to sell directly or join larger, reputable networks.