In the News
It’s Time For The Futures Exchange
February 22, 2010
My former boss, Wenda Harris Millard, had one of the most quotable, and quoted, lines in the online media industry in 2008 when she said, "We must not trade our advertising inventory like pork bellies", referring to...
Brand.net CEO Blair On Company’s Video Initiatives And VAST
February 03, 2010
Brand.net announced on Monday that it is expanding beyond graphical display advertising and including video in its solution set. Read the release.
Brand.net CEO Elizabeth Blair discussed the company's opportunity in online video advertising with AdExchanger.com.
Ad Net Brand.net Spreads Into Video With I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!®
February 01, 2010
Brand-focused online ad network Brand.net on Monday is expected to launch its first foray into video with a campaign for Unilever's line of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter spreads...
Ad Network? Video Ad Network? Why Not Both?
January 11, 2010
IAB Video Standard VAST Set to Align Video Ads. Ever wonder why a separate class of so-called video ad networks emerged over the last decade? Or, why more display ad networks don't serve pre-roll video ads? The reason is simple: a lack of standards for...
The SAI 50+: World's Most Valuable Internet Startups
October 28, 2009
Last year, we created the SAI 25, in which we valued and ranked some of the world's leading private digital companies.
This year we expanded our search and analysis. We found a lot more companies that are earning a lot of money or growing their audience...
In Search of Exchange 3.0 - What’s Still Missing to Bring the Biggest Advertising Budgets Online?
October 27, 2009
The recent launch of DoubleClick's Ad Exchange 2.0 (AdX 2.0) has ignited tremendous excitement over the near-term financial upside in online display advertising. After years of search monopolizing the market's attention, we see the biggest players — Google and Yahoo, the big agency holding companies...
Why your brand depends on page-level quality
September 10, 2009
Ensuring that ads are running adjacent to quality content is an issue of paramount importance to brand advertisers, and for good reason. Brands are tremendously valuable assets. There is no shortage of research available to underscore this point, but among the most compelling recent evidence...
Industry news on hirings, partnerships and new offerings
August 24, 2009
Brand.net, the online advertising network for Brand advertisers, announced several hires.
Yahoo Searches for an End to Its Dog Days
August 12, 2009
Is it time to let Yahoo out of the doghouse? The Web portal alienated much of Wall Street with the terms of its search deal with Microsoft. But, with the shares now off 16% since the deal was announced, investors may want to step back...
Brand.net Getting Traction With CPG Clients Says CEO Elizabeth Blair
May 18, 2009
Can you give us a sense of business momentum currently at Brand.net? Any surprises? EB: We've been trafficking campaigns for 12 months. Our target market is the Ad Age 100 and to date we're right on target, with the majority of our revenue coming from...
Taking Online-Ad Measurement Beyond the Click
May 18, 2009
Nielsen is working with its IAG unit, acquired last year, to study attitudes and using HomeScan data to study sales; it has worked with ad sellers such as Yahoo and Brand.net to help provide advertisers with some answers.
A realistic view of the almighty metric
May 18, 2009
Hardly a day goes by when a headline doesn't proclaim the death of branding at the hands of the almighty, all-measurable Internet. Yes, measurement is important and whenever possible we should drive toward direct metrics. But here's our collective challenge: The vast majority of retail...
Brand.net Announces Sales Momentum with Top 100 Advertisers, Adds Senior Sales Executives from WebMD and AOL and Opens Atlanta Office
May 12, 2009
Brand.net, the online advertising network for Brand advertisers, today announced significant business momentum in 2009, the appointments of sales leaders for its Central and Southeast regions, and the opening of its Atlanta office. Brand.net has shown remarkable growth in the past 12 months, working with...
Brand.net's SalesLink, the First Web-Wide Brand ROI Measurement Solution
April 23, 2009
Brand.net, the online advertising network for Brand advertisers, today released its latest SalesLink results, which demonstrate that a well executed Web-wide Brand campaign delivers significant offline sales and media ROI.
SalesLink measures the impact of online Brand campaigns on offline sales. In this most recent study...
Branded campaigns raise ROI, decrease competitor sales
April 23, 2009
Online ad network Brand.net has release a new study showing the connection between well planned online ad campaigns, offline sales and decreased competitor sales. Results from the SalesLink study find that the online campaign for an AdAge50 CPG brand not online drove offline sales but...
The venture game: What investors want...
April 16, 2009
Two former Yahoo employees, Elizabeth Blair and Andy Atherton, followed a similar strategy with Brand.net, which describes itself as "the first online advertising network focused exclusively on brand advertising."
According to Blair, just 5% of brand advertising - meant to make consumers aware of a product...
Eliminating Channel Conflict Between Publishers, Ad Networks
February 25, 2009
This CPM gap and the fact that some ad networks stress "transparency" in their sales approach creates a very real concern about channel conflict — two different sales forces selling the same thing in different ways and/or on different terms, essentially competing with each other...
Digital Marketing: Is It Time to Forget Measurement?
February 23, 2009
In several recent pieces I have written about the opportunities and limitations of measurement in online media, particularly for branding. If you read those articles, the title of this byline might seem strange. For the rest of you, this title might seem like downright heresy...
Brand.net Launches Quality Certification Program
February 03, 2009
Ad network Brand.net has launched the Brand.net quality certification platform that combines a grading system with proprietary page-level content filtering technology. The company said it will rely on IBM Proventia Web filter technology from IBM Internet Security Systems to improve the process of targeting ads...
Can Buying Blind Save Web Ads?
February 02, 2009
It’s not the way many do business, particularly in an age of return on investment and a stinging recession. But for one online-advertising start-up, that kind of faith — among buyers, sellers and publishers — is what’s needed to help prop up declining costs per...
Webdenda: People and Accounts of Note
January 20, 2009
Beth Soroken-Broun joined Brand.net, San Mateo, Calif., in a new post, director for sales for the East region, based in New York. She had been executive sales director at CondéNet, New York, part of the Condé Nast Publications unit of Advance Publications, handling the beauty...
Spending Ad Dollars Wisely
January 13, 2009
Search, display and video ad campaigns will get the most ad dollars, while experimentation will hold off, according to Andy Atherton, Brand.net COO.
(This) will be a year of back-to-basics marketing. Advertisers and the agencies that represent them will be hyper-focused on maximizing the efficiency of...
Online Branding: The Top Of The Funnel Is More Important Than Ever
January 12, 2009
It’s lonely at the top (of the funnel). Hardly a day goes by when a headline doesn't proclaim the death of Branding at the hands of the almighty and all-measurable Internet. For example, the title of a recent MediaPost article screamed "Brand Marketing is Dead."...
Lessons In Online Branding: Valuable Doesn't Always Mean Directly Measureable
January 05, 2009
Many advertising executives, including myself, have made the argument that even with all the exciting, sophisticated measurement capabilities available online, there are still some significant limitations for advertisers with respect to calculating a hard ROI on every impression. Brand marketing fundamentals remain critical to overall...
Advice For Yahoo!s, From Yahoo!s
December 10, 2008
Yahoo! was always like the General Electric of the Internet. So many people came up there and do amazing things. Some amazing people will stay and just as many amazing people will decide to go. The Yahoo! alumni network is just unparalleled. It’s not until...
9 Questions for Andy Atherton, Display Ad Evangelist and COO of Brand.net
November 11, 2008
I had the chance to meet Andy Atherton, COO and Co-Founder of Brand.net, a couple of weeks ago, and had an intriguing conversation with him about branding and display ads — so intriguing that I thought I'd ask him to answer a few questions for...
The Brand Advertiser's Dilemma
November 07, 2008
Brand advertising - "top of the funnel" ads designed to drive awareness, consideration and preference - will represent some two thirds of U.S. measured media spend in 2008. That’s about $130B. Branding is big business and even if the current economic crisis intensifies, none but...
V.C.s Said to Pony Up for Brand.net
August 26, 2008
Brand.net, founded by Elizabeth Blair and Andy Atherton, is reportedly hoping to tap into new demand by advertisers for online brand ads, as opposed to the text link advertising, the tradition bread-winners in the field.
Brand.net Raises $10 Million Second Round For Brand-Only Ad Net
August 25, 2008
I spoke with CEO Elizabeth Blair, a Yahoo veteran who left early last year, who said she "reads the articles" about the headwinds for brand ads, but that she doesn’t buy it. The company is banking on a balancing out of brand and direct response...
Ex-Yahoo execs take on brand ad network, raise funds
August 25, 2008
Last year, Elizabeth Blair and Andy Atherton — two former longtime executives in Yahoo's ad operations — started Brand.net to be an advertising network that would cater solely to wishes of brand advertisers, as opposed to direct marketers that buy text links, email lists, and...