Firm Launches Platform That Navigates Web Ads

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Frank Addante, co-founder and chief executive of the Rubicon Project, likens his startup to a Nasdaq for online advertising.

The company, which was officially launched last week, makes sense of the hundreds of ad networks out there for Web publishers by offering a platform that can place ads on multiple networks at the same time. This includes Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network and Advertising.com groups of Web sites that offer their combined traffic to advertisers.

With the launch, the Rubicon Project is offering use of its ad server computer software that places and tracks ads on Internet pages for free.

“We’re going to give you tools to do what we do here,” Addante said. “But the hope is that you turn on the ‘automatic optimization’ option that will help you make even more money.”

The premium service is what Rubicon Project hopes will bring in revenue. The automatic optimization is proprietary technology that allows publishers to log on and access advertising networks most compatible with the demographics of their online content. Instead of getting checks from multiple networks, users can limit their contact to the Rubicon Project, which pays them.

For example, if a Web site garners traffic evenly divided between female and male users, the software automatically matches a mix of ad networks that will best monetize that traffic, such as Martha’s Circle and Sports Ad Network. If some online traffic comes from Mexico, the Web site might be paired with an ad network called HispanoClick. The company’s software allows users to optimize ad placement by gender, age, ethnicity and geography.

“The online advertising market is as dynamic as the stock market, but not nearly as mature. It’s like the stock market without the Nasdaq,” Addante said. “We serve as that kind of hub for ad networks and Web sites.”

Last year, much of the $21 billion advertisers spent online was funneled through online ad networks. There were 15 such networks seven years ago. Today, there are 300.

The company has already distributed more than 12 billion ads across 800 Web sites and 60 top advertising networks during its beta phase.

Rubicon Project has 40 employees and is located in West L.A. It has raised $21 million in venture funding so far from investors including Clearstone Venture Partners, Stanford University and University of California Berkeley.

Four founders Addante, Craig Roah, Duc Chau and Julie Mattern reunited to launch the company, after their previous company, AdMonitor, was sold to DoubleClick in 2001. DoubleClick was acquired by Google for $3.1 billion last year.


More Ads

OpenX, a nine-year-old free, open-source ad server used by 30,000 Web publishers around the world, has spun off into a business, moved its headquarters from London to Pasadena and snatched up a former Yahoo Inc. executive as its CEO.

Tim Cadogan, who spent five years at Yahoo, most recently as a senior vice president, just opened up his one-man headquarters, with his 36 employees still working out of London and Poland.

“I like to gamble a bit with my career,” Cadogan said. “I’ve done it before.”

Cadogan was a consultant before joining GoTo.com, which was renamed Overture Services Inc. in 2001 and sold to Yahoo two years later.

His task is to create a revenue model for the open-source, downloadable software that claims to serve more than 250 billion ads a month to 100,000 Web sites. It would make money by charging ad networks access to its community of Web publishers and offering new services to publishers that can be monetized.

OpenX, previously called OpenAds, has raised $20 million in funding from venture capital firms including Accel Partners and Index Ventures.

Former AOL Chief Executive Jonathan Miller was recently named chairman.


Desktop Funding

Sitting around with Microsoft executives at a meeting in Redmond, Wash., three years ago, Isaac Garcia was baffled at how inefficient file sharing was between them and his team at CNet Networks Inc.

“We were passing a flash drive around the room,” Garcia said. E-mail wasn’t accessible and Garcia asked if Microsoft had a better file-sharing system. “They said they didn’t have the resources to set up those type of tools.”

That’s when the light bulb went off. If Microsoft didn’t have a Web-based information management system for internal use, why not come up with one and bring it to market?

So Garcia and his partner created Central Desktop, an eight-person company based in Pasadena. It has 2,000 paying corporate subscribers, including Allied Barton Security Services, Webcore Builders, and Cornell and Harvard universities.

Last week, it announced the company has raised $7 million in venture funding from OpenView Venture Partners.

Garcia said the money will be used to expand its sales and marketing operations, and deepen its research and development efforts.

Central Desktop is Garcia’s third startup. Garcia and his partner sold their previous two software companies to CNet.com a few years ago.


Staff reporter Booyeon Lee can be reached at

[email protected]

or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 230.

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