the Rubicon Project Debuts New Alternative for Generating Mad Cash for Websites

They’re back… Team that once shook up online advertising industry ready for round 2

Los Angeles, Calif. – October 8, 2007 – In 1998, a group of renegade entrepreneurs had the vision to enable websites to generate revenue by selling advertising on their site. They developed an advertising platform called L90/adMonitor. At the time, DoubleClick was the #1 competitor and adMonitor entered as the 7th horse in a 7 horse race. Within a few years, they grew from #7 to #2, delivered billions of ads each month for more than 3,000 companies, reached 65% of the Internet population, took the company public, and attracted a market cap of half a billion dollars before being acquired by DoubleClick in 2001.

The team went their separate ways, spurring innovation in the Internet world. Their leader, Frank Addante, a serial entrepreneur, started his 5th successful company. Craig Roah, who managed adMonitor’s extreme growth, built a company that eventually sold to ValueClick. Duc Chau, the mastermind behind the ad-serving platform, was the original developer of MySpace.com. And Julie Mattern, their resident industry veteran, developed some of the top online advertising platforms including YesMail.com, FastClick, ValueClick and Euroclick. (She’s vying hard to add “click” to the end of the company name for good luck.)

Earlier this year, the team regrouped. Amazed by the growth in the online advertising industry, they took a closer look at what’s changed and quickly realized the answer—not much. Except there was more: more advertising dollars, more ad impressions, more ad networks (e.g. Google AdSense, Yahoo!, Adtegrity, HispanoClick) selling more ads to more advertisers and more confusion for websites trying to make money from advertising. They identified two conflicting trends: first, the lack of advertising technology available for websites; second, the rapid growth of new ad networks.

They reunited to start the Rubicon Project, creating a self-serve solution for websites to generate mad cash from ads on their site. “Seven years ago, when we were in this business there were 15 ad networks. Two years ago, there were over a hundred. Today, more than 300,” said Frank Addante, CEO & Founder of the Rubicon Project, “The fact is that advertisers are spending money with all of them. More money is spread around to more places creating a large, yet highly fragmented and inefficient market.” There are small and large ad networks; CPA, CPC and CPM networks; text, display and now video networks; local ad networks and networks in other countries. Currently, 80% of online advertising goes unsold (directly) and that 80% is what’s sent to ad networks to monetize. “Today’s online advertising market is like the stock market without a NASDAQ system,” said Addante, “it needs to be automated. That’s our mission.”

the Rubicon Project enables websites to optimize 300 ad networks in one place. The company’s self-serve solution, powered by its smart matching technology, understands the strengths of each ad network and matches each ad impression to the best money-making opportunity. The secret is that it deciphers ad space into 9,000 micro-segments using geographic, demographic and contextual information. “Our engineers write notes in 1’s and 0’s.” says Craig Roah, COO and Founder of the Rubicon Project, “Intelligently matching ad impressions to ad networks for thousands of sites and hundreds of ad networks is easier said than done, especially when you need to do it billions of times per day.” The company has ambitious plans, being that there are hundreds of thousands of sites on the Internet that make money from advertising. the Rubicon Project service is free to join.

Sites ranging from small blogs to the world’s largest online properties can be up and running with the solution in 10 minutes. Early tests with alpha customers have shown promising results. Until now, the company has been operating in secret-ninja mode (a.k.a. “stealth”). Today, the company launched its private beta invitation site for 500 websites to participate in the beta program.

Benefits for websites include:

• 10 minute setup
• Optimize 300+ ad networks
• Control ad quality & filtering preferences
• Smart optimization: geographic, demographic and contextual
• Earnings dashboard and detailed reporting
• Consolidating billing; one check to the website

Benefits for ad networks include:

• More reach (access to new, intelligent traffic)
• Maximize ad placements where you are most likely to generate results
• Better visibility into publisher needs – identify opportunities and market gaps
• Ability to retain the best quality inventory (i.e. reduced churn.)
• Centralized billing

Want to make mad cash? Join the beta.
Want to be one of the first 500 websites to get a sneak peek before we let everyone in? It’s free to join. Don’t worry; sites not making the initial 500 will be first in line for the official public launch. To request an invitation to the private beta, visit www.rubiconproject.com.

About the Rubicon Project
the Rubicon Project is a group of industry-experienced, aggressive and passionate renegades dedicated to bringing a new level of efficiency to the fragmented Internet advertising space. The founders of the Rubicon Project shook up the online advertising industry in 1998 when they created L90/adMonitor, one of the most successful Internet advertising platforms that served over 3,000 of the web’s most recognized sites, reaching 65% of the Internet population before DoubleClick acquired it.

$27 Billion was spent advertising online in 2007, yet it’s still too hard for websites to sell their ad space online. While Internet advertising is an explosive market, it is an incredibly inefficient one with advertisers spending money with 300+ disparate advertising networks worldwide (e.g. Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, Tacoda, HispanoClick and Adtegrity). the Rubicon Project’s web-based, self-serve solution gives any size website the most complete access to the total available advertising market and its smart matching technology does all the work to perfectly match each ad impression with the optimal money-making opportunity. the Rubicon Project is the new online advertising standard that makes it effortless for websites to generate the mad cash they've always dreamed of. And, it’s free to join. Websites looking to make more money while doing less work should visit: http://www.rubiconproject.com.

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