Denise Shiffman’s Engage Daily Blog

I posed 7 questions to ADRevolution’s founder and CEO Andrew Westmoreland. In a world with too many ad networks, AdRevolution stands out with a model that gives power to consumers and pays advertisers on real results.

1. What is your business model?
Put simply, advertisers pay us for results, and we pay publishers a revenue share. It’s an advertiser-publisher model built around advertising with guaranteed response metrics.

2. When was the company founded and how has it evolved since its earliest days?
ADRevolution started technology development in 2005. Like most entrepreneurs, I thought that it would take a year to develop… really it took more than two years to get the technology to a beta phase. The original vision was to transform the marketplace specifically in email, but as we evolved we saw that we had a competitive edge for when we choose to fully enter other markets like display and mobile.

All of this said, 2008 is a vastly different year for us. It’s a growth year instead of a beta year like 2007 was. We have already signed more deals in 2008 than we did in the whole history of the company, while at the same time, we haven’t lost a single customer that’s signed up, which shows we’re delivering real value. It’s all very exciting.

3. You’ve recently announced the consumer choice tool. How does it work exactly?
We’re pretty proud of this new tool. It allows the consumer to directly and immediately control their advertising experience. What this specifically means is that they can say which ads they do and don’t like, then have a new suggestion immediately formulated for what they might enjoy as a result. It’s more than doubled our existing distribution volume because consumers are so excited to have control.

4. Who are your customers…consumers, publishers, or advertisers?
We serve three masters: Advertisers, Publishers, and Consumers. We align the interests of all stakeholders in the digital media process. What this means is that advertisers get real measurable results from the ad budget, publishers achieve optimal revenues and consumers receive relevant content. Everybody wins.

5. There are so many ad networks today. How is your solution different from the competition?
Great question. While it’s a crowded space, most networks attack some small segment of the value chain and have forgotten at least one of the major stakeholders. Our solution engages the consumer in an advertising dialogue that doesn’t end with the display of an ad. We give the consumer a voice in the advertising process, and as a result, achieve earnings that are simply unparalleled by our competition.

I also continue to be amazed by how many networks are still out there selling on a cost-per-thousand basis. Everything we do is pay for performance because we know that we produce results.

6. How will technology drive the evolution of online advertising?
I believe that, to a large extent, technology has always promised to deliver accountability and interactivity to advertising in general. We have all heard about the holy grail of 1:1 marketing, but few have done the heavy technical lifting necessary to achieve perfected relevancy. ADR has finally delivered on the promise and where we go, others will follow. The terminal impact of this will mean that all stakeholders will be better off. Consumers will see fewer but highly relevant ads, publishers will profit wildly from their consumer relationships, and advertisers will achieve genuine ROI for every ad dollar spent.

7. Can advertising get too personal?
Absolutely. Like with any human relationship, I think healthy boundaries and mutual respect are key. In the case of ADR, we adhere to the strictest permission standards for email, which means we have cultivated a meaningful and transparent relationship with the consumer before we ever contact them with relevant offerings. Because we have this strong relationship, it’s well received by our audience. In part, this is because the counterpoint to “too personal” is not personal enough. Every consumer is bored and frustrated by the bombardment of irrelevant and intrusive ads. Our goal is to create a completely different kind of relationship, where the consumer gets what they want and are happy to receive it.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 8:41 am and is filed under Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.