PubMatic Enables Ad Optimization Across Every Ad Network

Palo Alto, Calif. - (January 28, 2008) - PubMatic (www.pubmatic.com), the first and largest ad optimization platform for Web publishers worldwide, today announced the ability to optimize online ads across any and every ad network. Now Web publishers using PubMatic can eliminate the headache of testing and deciding which ad network and layout will maximize their revenues, because PubMatic does it for them.

Currently in beta, PubMatic serves more than 2,000 publishers and more ad networks than any other ad inventory optimization platform.

"PubMatic immediately doubled our ad revenues by recommending the optimal ad network for each and every visit to WinCustomize.com," said Michael Crassweller, Web Site Manager, StarDock. "Since Wincustomize.com serves up nearly 4 million ads per day, PubMatic's ad network optimization has made a big difference to our bottom line."

The PubMatic public beta is open to all Web publishers, regardless of geography or company size. Signing up is simple and free: publishers can visit www.pubmatic.com/signup to get started in minutes.

AOL buying Quigo

• AOL is buying Quigo, a contextual ad network, for a reported $340 million [techcrunch.com]
  
• Quigo will be the fourth ad company AOL has acquired in 2007. Earlier in the year, AOL acquired Third Screen Media (mobile advertising), Adtech AG, an ad serving platform based in Frankfurt, Germany, and Tacoda, the behavioral targeting company. All of them roll into Platform-A, AOL’s recently announced ad platform division [paidcontent.org]
  
• Quigo, has over 500 publisher relationships and about 3,000 advertisers. [readwriteweb.com]
  
• Quigo has raised $45 million since opening its doors in 2000 [paidcontent.org]
  

algoGod: Be Crowned the World's Greatest Algorithms Expert!

Komli today launched the “algoGod contest” for machine learning, math, genetics, and algorithm experts.

http://www.komli.com/algogod/

Contest winner to receive Rs. 2,00,000

Start date: October 15th 2007.
Entries must be submitted on or before November 14th 2007.
Results will be declared on December 31st 2007.

Have you ever wondered if you are the best algorithms expert on the planet? Have you ever thought, "I know I can beat everyone, just let me prove it?" Well Komli's algoGod contest is for you, it's your chance to show the world how smart you really are!

The algoGod contest seeks to crown one expert as the 'Algorithms God'. How are we going to do this? Well, the proof is in the pudding! We want every contestant to solve a common problem, and whoever is best will receive the algoGod prize!

A little more background:

Komli lives in the world of online advertising, and online advertising is rife with opportunity with complex algorithms based on cutting edge topics such as machine learning, data mining, graph theory, etc. Online advertising is growing at a very fast pace, and the number of variables affecting the performance of an online ad has been growing at an even faster pace. Komli is devising methods for maximizing the yield of online advertising using advanced statistical machine learning methods over large-scale systems. This is a very interesting and complex algorithm problem.

Komli is currently using a set of algorithms for maximizing the yield of online ads, collectively called 'Yin-Yang'. There are a lot of interesting alternative approaches to Yin-Yang that have yet to be tried. Komli is interested in determining if any of these alternative approaches can beat Yin-Yang by making better predictions.

Komli will provide participants with anonymous ad impression data and a prediction accuracy bar that is 50% better than what Yin-Yang can do on the same training data set. Participants' solutions will be judged by 'Time complexity' and 'Space complexity' criteria. The participant whose solution works best will receive Rs. 2,00,000, bragging rights and an opportunity to work with Komli. Of course, participants have to share their method and code with Komli. Eager participants can signup for the contest by filling the form on the left. Also, please let us know of any questions at algogod@komli.com.

PubMatic selected by TechCrunch as a Top 40 Startup in the World

PubMatic, a product of Komli, was selected by TechCrunch as a Top 40 Startup in the World. Nearly 750 startups from around the world applied for this honor, and PubMatic was lucky enough to be selected! This was announced at the TechCrunch40 conference in San Francisco, CA, a conference built to showcase these 40 top startups.

We are hiring!

If you dream in Java, think in PHP, and talk in <xml> over IM, you should talk to us.

In addition, as part of our presentation at the conference, we announced that PubMatic has been released into a global beta available for all publishers around the world! During our alpha over 500 publishers from around the world have been using PubMatic and seeing some amazing results. See news about PubMatic here.

Online advertising is growing at a very fast pace, and the number of variables affecting the performance of an online ad has been growing at an even faster pace. Komli is devising methods for maximizing the yield of online advertising using advanced algorithms running over large-scale systems. We are also developing decision support system for data analytics, analysis of real time data, such as user behavior and web analytics, server scalability to support 100,000,000 requests per day (to start with), and much more cool stuff.


The last I posted about Komli, we had just moved into our new office. We were still building the product. Since then a lot has changed, we wrote a bunch of code, did a beta, were selected as a Top 40 startup in the world, our team grew to 8 people, and have been having a lot of fun.

The beta release was amazing, we had close to 400 customers using PubMatic, a small team of very enthusiastic world-class programmers were writing code and managing escalations at the same time.

While we hacked code in Java, PHP, AJAX and C 12 hours a day, and listened to rock and the latest Bollywood tunes of Bhool Bhuliyaa, the continued to have a sense of humor. This is a sketch that one of us drew on the whiteboard, while he was designing a new DB schema for user authentication.

And, did I mention, we never miss a chance to have fun ...

Ad Networks: Why it’s better than ever to be a targeted content site

Jeremy Liew has written a very interesting article on Venturebeat:

A recent report by Collective Media found that:

• 66% of advertisers plan to increase their usage of ad networks in 2007
• 88% of respondents planning to use online ad networks in 2007 (up from 77% in 2006).
• 57% of respondents believed how an ad network targets audiences was the #1 differentiating factor between networks

...

The WSJ recently had an excellent article on behavioral targeting that detailed Pepsi’s launch of Aquafina Alive,their new low cal vitamin enhanced water. The campaign was backed by an online campaign through Tacoda and targeted to people who had previously visited “healthy lifestyles” websites.

The result? Pepsi recorded a threefold increase in the number of people clicking on its Aquafina Alive ads compared with previous campaigns. “We’ve never been able to get to this level of granularity,” says John Vail, director of the interactive marketing group at Pepsi-Cola North America.

Internet Ad Spends In India To Double In 2007

Reported on ContentSutra by Anupama Chandrasekaran:

Media agency ZenithOptimedia expects Internet ad spend in India to more than double in 2007 and to be 10 times its current size in 2009. [via agencyfaqs] Ad spends on the Internet could jump to Rs. 450 crore this year from Rs. 210 crore in 2006 and could skyrocket to Rs 2,250 crore mark by 2009, the study said. This would mean that in two years, ad spends on the Internet will surpass those on radio, cinema and outdoor, individually.

Online Transactions To More Than Double In 2007-08

ContentSutra reports:

Railway, air and movie tickets, as well as electronic item sales are boosting e-commerce in Indian metros, according to a study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India. The result could be a 150 percent jump in online revenue to Rs. 5,500 crores in 2007-08 from Rs, 2,200 crores in the year-ago period. According to the report, the percentage of Mumbai’s population that shops online is 24 percent and is expected to touch 40 percent. Delhi follows suit at 20 percent and is likely to go up to 30 percent. Ironically, the percentage of e-shopping population in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, stands at a paltry 6 percent for 2006-07.

It's very interesting to see Bangalore doing so little ePurchases. Do you wonder why? Is it because IT-people are more aware of the frauds that can be done online, and therefore they wouldn't like to eat the food that they cook? Like ever time I put my credit card details on a web form, I know that the data is going over wire from my laptop to the router to the server to their server to some other server, and it is potentially cached at all locations. Plus I need to check if I am not being phished, so I triple check the URL, and then I check if it is a https connection all the way. I am sure my wife wouldn't think of that when she does an electronic purchase.

But, I love the progress in online transactions increasing in India. More online transactions also means more advertising moving online, good for Komli :-)

WSJ on Internet Advertising

WSJ has published an interesting writeup on Internet advertising:

It's becoming apparent that Internet advertising, in its myriad permutations, isn't just a new variation on traditional advertising. The ability of online advertisers to place information in highly targeted contexts in which users can click through to further information and even make purchases seems so revolutionary that it can hardly be called advertising at all. It may well be that the frequency of ad usage will generate the same data-intensive refinements that exist in the search field, yielding similar economies of scale -- and a natural monopoly.

As an investor, I love natural monopolies. Internet advertising is now a $40 billion-a-year industry with estimated 20% annual growth. I find Google at $470 a share attractive for its search business alone, with its continuing impressive growth and wide margins. These intriguing developments on the advertising side of the Internet make it even more compelling.

Microsoft's moving business model ...

Om Malik wrote on GigaOM:

Microsoft’s willingness to pay big dollars and bid aggressively for aQuantive ($66 a share versus mid-$30s trading price) shows that the Barons of Redmond truly believe that advertising will play a big role in its future. How that eventually plays out - remains to be seen.

As an aside, as Microsoft moves away from its more predictable software (OS and productivity suite) based business models into new categories - games, subscriptions and now advertising - do you think some of the predictability in their business model is going to be … to put mildly… be replaced by volatility?

Greg Sterling has more thoughts about the deal after his chat with Joe Doran, General Manager, Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions.

Fred Wilson on Online Advertising

Fred Wilson writes, following Yahoo's purchase of RightMedia:

Clearly the online ad market is hot, particularly the "display" side of the business. Both Right Media and Doubleclick are in the "infrastructure" part of the business. Doubleclick leads the market in ad serving, the most basic online ad function. And Right Media leads the market in the exchange side of the business, bring buyers and sellers together and providing transparency to everyone involved.

I think there is a lot more that can and will be done around exchanges. To date, Right Media has operated at the low end (remnant inventory) of the market. That's because the low end of the market benefits most from the efficiencies that come from an exchange. But over time I believe the entire online ad market will become exchange driven and everyone will benefit from that.

So I don't think these transactions mark the mature/consolidation phase at all. I think there's tremendous opportunity ahead in online advertising. But entrepreneurs and investors should learn the lessons of Doubleclick and Right Media. Build a dominant position in a valuable sector of the business and you'll be rewarded handsomely.

Komli Announces investment from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Helion Ventures; introduction of the Komli Premium Network

Komli today announced an investment from Draper Fisher Jurvetson (http://www.dfj.com) and Helion Ventures (http://www.helionvc.com), two leading venture capital firms. Draper Fisher Jurvetson, based in the US, and Helion Venture Partners, based in India, have been involved with companies such as Skype, Overture, Hotmail, MakeMyTrip, Daksh, and Junglee. Komli has partnered with these two funds to utilize the global experience of Draper Fisher Jurvetson and the local resources of Helion Venture Partners.

In conjunction with this investment, Komli is introducing the Komli Premium Network, today. The Komli Premium Network works with premium quality publishers, helping marketers interact with consumers in a more targeted and rich way online.

Lastly, Komli is aggressively looking to hire India’s best and brightest people as it builds new products to help make online advertising simpler and more efficient for online publishers and advertisers around the world. Komli is looking for great people across engineering, product management, business development, sales, and client services (more information is available at Komli Careers -- http://www.komli.com/careers).

Also, see Komli in press:

• contentSutra: Ad Network Komli Raises Funding From Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Helion Venture Partners
• StartupAvenues: Ad network Komli raises funds from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Helion
• Alootechie: Online Ad network Komli.com receives VC fund from Draper Fisher, Helion