Adify

Cox Digital Solutions (merged and changed names, formerly adify)
Privately held, indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises
Industry Internet, Media, Technology, Online Advertising
Founded 2005
Founder Larry Braitman, Richard Thompson and Russ Fradin
Headquarters 1000 Cherry Ave., Suite 200, San Bruno, California, U.S.
Key people
 Russ Fradin, Founder, President
Franklin Vincent, General Manager - Adify
Jim Larrison, General Manager - Brand Communities
Steven Heyman, Head of Product & Engineering - Brand Communities
Leif Welch, SVP Platform Solutions & Client Services
Amy Richards, SVP Media Client Services, Operations, & Monetization
Satish Katiyar, Engineering & Operations
Max Ochoa, SVP, Finance & Administration
Joelle Gropper Kaufman, SVP, Marketing
Kevin Tan, SVP, International
Products Adify Network Builder, Adify Media, Adify Amplified, Adify Elite Publisher Network, Adify Ad Server
Number of employees
 160 (2010)
Website Adify.com

Adify provides a number of online advertising-related products and services to website owners, ad network operators, advertisers and agencies. Adify is an indirectly and wholly owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises.

Products and services

Adify’s first product, Adify Network Builder, helps customers to build and commercialize networks of websites. Adify Network Builder is a platform for media companies to aggregate and manage websites that share similar content and audiences.[1] The resulting ad networks are known as vertical ad networks.[2] Vertical ad networks built using Adify Network Builder include Fidelity National Financial/Cyberhomes's Real Estate & Living Media Network, HotChalk’s Hotchalk Media Group, NBC’s IVillage Total Health, Forbes’ Forbes Business & Finance Blog Network, Auto Trader’s AutoTrader.com Access, and Warner Bros.' Momlogic.

Adify’s second major offering, Adify Media, sells inventory across the networks that run on the Adify Network Builder platform. Adify Media reaches approximately 12,000 websites across 180 vertical ad networks, representing approximately 73 MM unique US visitors. Adify publishers tend to be midsized, which have five figure monthly visitor counts.[3] Since Adify Media’s launch in April 2009, advertisers that have run campaigns through Adify Media include Best Western Hotels, Eukanuba, Febreze, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and Betty Crocker.[4]

In May 2009, Adify launched the Adify Amplified Partner program to share its APIs and allow third parties to develop applications for the vertical ad network managers who use Adify Network Builder. Since Adify released its APIs, a number of advertising technology companies have begun to develop applications for the Network Builder platform, including Aggregate Knowledge, Ooyala, Rovion, and Wave2 Media Solutions.[5]

Adify also maintains its own horizontal ad network of websites, known as Adify Elite, and offers site-side ad serving.

Criticism

Adify has been criticized for their decision to limit publishers to only joining one network per publisher account. Critics have brought up that Adify's appeal to publishers was the ability to manage multiple network memberships with one account, but as of August 2009 this is no longer possible.[6]

History

In the summer of 2005, Larry Braitman and Richard Thompson and Russ Fradin co-founded Adify. Adify's founders worked together at Flycast, the first online advertising network.[1] The first round of venture funding was led by Venrock, announced on August 4, 2006.[7] Shortly thereafter, they launched Adify’s first product, Adify Network Builder.

Adify gained early recognition when NBC's venture investment fund, Peacock Equity, announced that they were launching a $250 million equity fund to invest in media and technology companies, and that the first $3 million would be invested in Adify.[8]

In April 2008, Adify closed a deal to be acquired for $300 million by a wholly owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises.[2] On January 11, 2011, Adify merged with another Cox company Cox Cross Media to form a new company Cox Digital Solutions

International presence

Outside the US, Adify has offices in London, Singapore, and Berlin. Media companies from the UK, Germany, Sweden, Greece, India, Japan, and Australia have built networks using Adify Network Builder.

References

  1. 1 2 Sramana Mitra(2008),"Entrepreneur Journeys, Volume One", ISBN 1-4392-0687-2 Soft-cover. p.87-100
  2. 1 2 Amirshahi, Bobby (April 29, 2008). "Cox Enterprises Announces Deal to Acquire Silicon Valley-based Adify Corporation.". Coxenterprises.com. Cox Enterprises. Retrieved June 13, 2011.
  3. ↑ Mindlin, Alex (August 23, 2009). "An Uptick for Real Estate Ads Online". nytimes.com. New York Times. Retrieved October 1, 2009.
  4. ↑ Walsh, Mark (April 27, 2009). "Adify Offers Horizontal Buys Across Vertical Networks". mediapost.com. MediaPost News. Retrieved May 29, 2009.
  5. ↑ Rao, Leena (May 26, 2009). "Adify Opens Up API To Expand Technology For Ad Networks". techcrunch.com. TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 28 May 2009. Retrieved May 29, 2009.
  6. ↑ Blair, Everton (June 8, 2009). "Adify Ad Networks Commits Online Suicide". connectedinternet.co.uk. Connected Internet. Retrieved October 1, 2009.
  7. ↑ Marshall, Matt. "Silicon Valley ad veterans launch start-up, Adify; raise $8million". San Jose Mercury News. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
  8. ↑ Thomasch, Paul (April 16, 2007). "GE launches $250 million media fund". reuters.com. Reuters. Retrieved May 25, 2009.

External links

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