Care.com is described as a “Family 2.0” company that helps users find caregivers for children, pets and the elderly. It was founded in 2006 as a result of owner and CEO Sheila Lirio Marcelo’s personal struggle to find quality care providers. Before starting Care.com, Marcelo was part of several Internet ventures like TheLadders.com and Upromise.com.
Adify is a vertical advertising platform co-founded by Russ Fradin with former Flycast co-founders, Larry Braitman and Richard Thompson. I interviewed Adify’s CEO, Russ Fradin in 2007.
Google is powerful. Of course. But is it invincible? According to Hitwise, Google accounted for 64.49% of all U.S. Searches in the four weeks ending October 27, 2007. According to RimmKaufman, Google controls 79% of the pay-per-click ad market. Google derives 99% of its revenue from advertising.
Acquisition Strategy Google has made several acquisitions this year. The key acquisitions were Adscape, Trendalyzer, Marratech, FeedBurner, PeakStream, GrandCentral, Postini and Jaiku. Google is yet to complete its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick Inc., a global leader in digital marketing technology and services. Google’s acquisition strategy is different from most other companies. Google has mostly
The discussion below is more specific to my own blog, and since I happen to be an Adify customer, I asked Russ some details about what are some of my options – current and future. I choose to publish it because I am sure there are other bloggers out there who would find this information
Acquisitions in the online advertising world continues, as WPP Group buys 24/7. WSJ reports: “Ad agency WPP Group agreed to buy online marketing services company 24/7 Real Media for $11.75 a share, or about $649 million. The deal demonstrates the rapidly rising interest in companies that help broker online ads. 24/7 Real Media offers search-marketing
Strategy, market opportunity identification, positioning … all this good stuff apart, a successful ad network would require Adify to be able to execute in conjunction with the large media companies at many more levels of operational excellence. There, as per my own experience, so far, both Adify and Washington Post are only moderately acceptable. By
SM: Are you getting the visibility at the right level of executive sponsorship at these large media companies? RF: I can tell you there are a lot of very senior folks at Washington Post that I have personally met. Beyond just them, deciding to build a network is a very important decision for a brand.