IFRA

WAN-IFRA: Is AdLizard for Web already in use at a newspaper company?

Danny Gruber: Vienna will be our ‘launch platform’ for AdLizard for Web. We have shown it to partners in the UK and USA, and we are very close to securing our first publisher client that will deploy this new technology. We’ve been doing a lot of work these last years in the area of print self-service technology, but the demand from publishers for a self-service solution for online ad banners or video is huge and we are now addressing that.

Danny Gruber, founder of Qmecom, bought two years ago by AdLizard, played an important part in the development of this new suite of applications.

WAN-IFRA: A couple of years ago, AdLizard made a strategic investment in the company you created, Qmecom. Can we say that what we will see at IFRA Expo is the direct result of this collaboration ?

Danny Gruber: The company I founded five years ago has developed a platform that can mass personalize Flash (rich media) ads online. So we could use any targeting information about an end user: contextual targeting, behavioral targeting, CRM information, etc., take one ad and literally produce hundreds of thousands version of it, specifically created to each and every user’s targeting criteria. We bring direct marketing to the online world. Our technology has received several awards, especially in the USA.

We are experts on behavioral and ad networks and the revenue process around them. AdLizard is a specialist in self service for print in the newspaper environment. They saw that our company could help a transition to online with the same philosophy. We began to build two years ago a platform that integrated the AdLizard for print product. In other words, if a user visits our platform, the information they use to build a print ad can then be transferred to create online ad banners. We build the interface. It can be hosted by us or installed at the newspaper, where we ensure the integration. Any advertiser can then use it to design its advertising campaign.

WAN-IFRA: Do you see those self-service tools as a big demand from  publishers?

Danny Gruber: In the recent years, the cost of creating Flash ads for online campaigns has been expensive for small advertisers. We’re now completely removing the creative cost barrier. The second barrier for the SMB advertisers was the cost of advertising in the media. But the media have made lots of effort recently to open their ad inventories, offering cheaper prices and specific environments for those small advertisers. All this opens the door to new revenues.

WAN-IFRA: Several players are now offering self-service tools in the online environment. What’s your competitive advantage?

Danny Gruber: Our solution is really three steps. The first one is to create the ads. Others do that too, but we believe we’ve done the best job. Number two is to target your audience, and that means not only do behavioral targeting but also integrate with ad serving systems, and fewer companies have the ability to do that. And number three is report and measure. Once the advertiser has placed his ad in Google or on a publisher ad network, in the middle of a campaign he can monitor the performance of that campaign and choose to modify the marketing message to improve the clickthough rate he had on that ad, etc… And there are very few companies that can do those three steps...

In the future you will have players, like what AdReady does for the New York Times, that will specifically address the online needs, but nothing for the print. Other companies are already present in the self-serve print advertising technologies segment but don’t propose things for the web, though they may. Then you have the social networks that are building tools to take advantage of the huge amount of data they have amassed on their users for targeted ads. It’s already the case with Facebook and MySpace. But you have to buy on their web sites, same for Google etc…. With our system, the possibilities are broader. And Google sees us as a fantastic search channel for them, the reason being that newspaper publishers and other online ad networks can grow their revenues by enabling their advertisers not only to put advertising on their own network but also in Google, for example.

*AdLizard Web Ad Solutions
The AdLizard for Web platform is a process that allows any advertiser to choose from a variety of “agency grade” creative templates and change logos, text, images and background colors. An advertiser can be up and running in 15 minutes by following these steps:
1. Create an ad
2. Target your audience
3. Set your budget
4. Run your online campaign
5. Measure the performance
Users can create multiple versions of an advertisement in a campaign, target their media buy to a local audience, and measure the performance of each and every advertisement -- giving them the ability to change the media budget allocation against better-performing ads in real time.