AO Take: Online ad network AdBrite wants to make it fast, easy, and efficient to buy and sell online ads—and increase the transparency of the process. By letting advertisers select specific properties on which they want to advertise and giving them access to the stats before they buy, and letting site publishers decide their pricing, AdBrite is adding more control to the advertising space. At the same time, it's keeping its services and tools simple to use for both ad buyers and sellers of any budget.

Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
Founded: 2001
CEO: Iggy Fanlo
Employees: 70
Investors Include: Sequoia Capital
AO Media 100 Category: Online Advertising Service Providers

AO Take: Kosmix has developed algorithms and technology that categorize the entire web into understandable categories, such as health, video games, finance, and travel. In the massive healthcare market and the popular travel segment, Kosmix chose excellent verticals to start with. And although still in its infancy, Kosmix is worth visiting to see how next-generation vertical search is taking shape. On the front end, its clean, attractive user interface and its seamless integration of useful content with commercial messaging are particularly striking. Meanwhile, the strong back-end technology results in more relevant placements for advertisers.

Headquarters: Mountain View, CA
CEOs: Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman
Founded: 2004
Employees: 22
...More

AO Take: Nellymoser is a provider of media solutions for mass-market, network connected mobile devices. Its product suite offers modular and scalable end-to-end mobile delivery solutions that support all types of rich media. Media companies and network operators can deliver interactive, personalized mobile experiences that include video, music, ringtones, graphics, and games—and let consumers preview, purchase, and share content directly from their mobile devices. Nellymoser has built a strong mobile marketing and merchandising platform and impressive set of customers on limited financing (a $5.3 million Series A raised in mid-2005), attesting to the power of its solutions. This mobile content enabler definitely punches above its weight.

Headquarters: Arlington, MA
Founded: 2000
...More

AO Take: The iAmplify MediaFactory enables the sale, delivery, and distribution of downloadable content on the Internet. Consumers get the downloads delivered to private online libraries and desktop media players via a personalized, encrypted RSS feed. iAmplify lets users access premium content—with price points for some content in the $100 to $200 range—not readily available otherwise. The company works on a strong subscription model, with partnerships ranging from book publishers like HarperCollins and Random House to personalities such as Marianne Williamson, Marilu Henner, Phil Hellmuth, and Kathy Smith. Retail partnerships with Google Video and Yahoo stores mean lots of exposure to discerning customers looking for a more meaningful video experience.

AO Take: The DaveTV application by Dave Networks lets TV viewers personalize what they watch and when they do it. DaveTV's claim to fame is its ability to build custom channels, with which it hopes to attract marketers from both big brands and small who are looking for highly targeted audiences. The company is well positioned to offer highly contextualized advertising solutions, and is worth watching in the streaming content space. Its "many-to-lots" model and ease-of-use could make DaveTV a democratizing force in broadcast entertainment.

AO Take: Fora.tv is a digital forum designed for people to gather and discuss information on public affairs, politics, and culture, as well as see historic speeches and other events. The site features chapters that separate sections of video by topic or speaker and synchronized transcription that lets people type in keywords and go directly to tagged spots in the video. Funded by William Randolph Hearst III, among others, the site is essentially a YouTube for world affairs, looking to gather a community of global, intellectually curious people. Fora.tv is currently partnered with a wide variety of public forums and organizations, such as CSPAN, the Commonwealth Club, the Hoover Institution, and Cambridge University.

Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
Founded: 2006
...More

How should companies shift their business models to adapt to the disruptive new trends in the media industry?  At AlwaysOn Media NYC, we brought together David Kirkpatrick of Fortune, IBM’s Saul Berman, Carla Hendra of Ogilvy, Doug McGary from the Media Group, and MTV’s Denmark West to discuss the top ways for media businesses to weather the coming storm.

Where is the ad money going? How can the companies capitalize on the new opportunities, and how should they address the growing divide between content creators, who seek hyper syndication, and distributers, who often prefer walled gardens?

...More

Does Google help advertisers build brand loyalty or increase brand preference? Can advertisers build customer relationships on search alone?

Watch the video of the entire AO Media panel, "Are There Chinks in Google's Armor?" here.

Companies like Adify, Blue Lithium, Quigo, Seevast, and Wunderloop are flourishing in the shadows of Google’s search advertising empire.  We invited Marketwatch’s Bambi Francisco, arguably the world’s most attentive watcher and reporter on these technologies, to get the CEOs of these brash young startups to wrestle with those questions and more at our recent AO Media conference in New York.

...More

These ventures aren’t just redefining the way marketers reach audiences; they’re also changing the very nature of the relationship between brands and their consumers.

Below is part 2 of our analysis of the AO Media 100 winners, which appears in full in the AO Magazine. Check out part one and the complete list of winners here.

To be effective, the new marketer must understand how to leverage and build communities. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Friendster, along with newcomers Tagged and “social reviews” site Yelp, offer rapid access to like-minded constituencies. When companies want to build their own topical and product-centric communities, companies like Leverage Software offer the tools.

New marketers also need big ears, to track what’s being said about their products, and even bigger nets to catch the right audience....More

Calling all entrepreneurs! Tony Perkins and the AlwaysOn crew have teamed up with Bambi Francisco of Dow Jones Marketwatch and her Vator.TV network to coproduce an open competition for entrepreneurs of all ages, with media companies at all stages. We're looking for anyone with a great media business plan to upload a two-minute video pitch to Vator.TV, for a chance to win big money and earn a spot on the international open-media stage.

The winners will receive a chance to be funded by PayPal cofounder and Silicon Valley investment wizard Peter Thiel. Vator.TV will also fly them out to Hollywood in May to present their plan before a live audience of hundreds of investors, bloggers, and industry experts at the second annual AlwaysOn Hollywood event.  We'll also...More