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A few weeks ago a friend of mine and a friend of Lijit’s lost his battle with cancer. They say success has many fathers, but Jerome can certainly claim an important role in making Lijit a success. Jerome was the first institutional investor in Lijit when he was at High Country Ventures.
I got to know Jerome while I was still at Raindance and through the final years of my involvement at Raindance we would often meet for breakfast to discuss my many crazy ideas. When I started Lijit, Jerome helped me formulate some of the ideas and strategies and when our Angel round of financing needed a little more investment fuel he led High Country into a $200K investment.
Jerome was a tough business guy, and like a lot of tough business guys he had his fans and otherwise. I was always in the fan category. When he had something constructive to add around the board table he would add it. When he didn’t he wouldn’t. Jerome was a consummate professional.
A few years ago Jerome moved on to San Francisco and Crosslink Capital. I pitched Crosslink for a late stage investment round but my style didn’t mesh with the other partners at Crosslink. I believe humility is the best tool as a CEO, but as Jerome counseled me after the fact, that style can appear weak – especially to a Valley VC expecting “ego” to be plentiful. We found our investment somewhere else but nearly every time I was in San Francisco over the last two years I would meet Jerome for breakfast at the Meridian Hotel near his office. He always had helpful advice on business and we had great discussions about taking our favorite cars to the track to go fast.
I’m not a friend maker (or collector) by nature. But I counted Jerome as one of them.
Tags: industry, Todd Vernon | View Comments
We are excited to announce Federated Media Publishing’s new Tech Blog. With FMP’s recent acquisition of Lijit Networks, technology has come to the forefront of the company’s business strategy and the new blog will share details about current and future technology initiatives.
Employees across FMP will lift the curtain and talk about the high level technology behind FMP’s advertiser and publisher products and services. As Tim Musgrove, Chief Scientist and FMP, states: “we’ll share some of the results, surprises and problems we’ve uncovered along the way, as well as our ideas on where things might go in the future.”
We already have a few posts up about current initiatives at FMP:
- Our very own Todd Vernon, Founder and CEO of Lijit and now EVP of Technology at FMP, provides his thoughts on how FMP’s acquisitions of Lijit, TextDigger, FoodBuzz, and BigTent will help turn FMP into a top 5 media property.
- FMP Chief Scientist Tim Musgrove provides a deep dive into Conversation Targeting (CT), a top technology priority for the company in early 2012.
- Peter Ridge, Senior Director of Product Management at FMP, discusses security requirements for a wireless network.
Please take a moment to check out the new site, and let us know what you think!
Tags: industry, Lijit publishers, new features, publishers | View Comments
Lijit’s RTB efforts deliver more money to online publishers
Jan 26th
by Sonya Caprio in Community, Company
Many of you are witness to a shift in the world of online advertising that sees ad networks being replaced by programmatic buying technologies like real-time bidding (RTB) and private exchanges. Technologies like these deliver greater return to both advertisers and publishers by enabling them to connect directly to each other. Advertisers set a price for what they’re willing to pay to access a publisher’s audience, and publishers gain greater control over their inventory while at the same time exposing it to a larger pool of demand sources. RTB is what enables this interaction between advertiser and publisher to take place.
Publishers are the core of our business, and because of that we are constantly looking for new ways to deliver higher CPMs and fill rates. When it comes to RTB, the more DSPs we integrate with, the more access brand advertisers have to our publishers’ inventory. The more demand from brand advertisers, the higher the return we can deliver to publishers.
Today we are pleased to announce our latest RTB integration with XA.net, our newest partner. The partnership with XA.net comes on the heels of a handful of other recent integrations with industry-leading DSPs including MediaMath, m6d, Chango, and MyBuys. With these and many more planned for the coming months, publishers should continue to see higher returns from Lijit’s online advertising services.
Tags: industry, Lijit Advertising Services, Lijit publishers, new features | View Comments
We caught wind of some changes over at SAY Media. Seems they have asked some of their smaller publishers to find an alternate ad network.
We could speculate as to why they made this decision, but that really does not matter much.
What does matter is the publisher.
We would love to extend an invitation to any publishers who would like to work with us over here at Lijit.
Publishers are our people.
Let us know right away if we can help you continue your revenue stream – especially at the most important time of the year.
Here is more information on our ad services.
Please email us and a member of our publisher development team will be in touch shortly. We look forward to working with you.
Happy Holidays!
Tags: industry, Lijit publishers, publishers | View Comments
We just rolled out our last major software release for 2011 and we’re capping the year off with even more updates to our publisher analytics and our ad platform. This year has been incredible for Lijit, and seen us grow our advertising platform and publisher analytics products to create what we believe to be the best publisher platform out there.
Ad Metrics Updates
We made some great refinements to the way we present ad metrics in our publisher dashboards. We pulled together the most important ad metrics we offer publishers and integrated them into the dashboard. It now features not only the normal graphs and stats you expect, but we’ve included charts that show CPM , fill rate, and click performance. This brings all of the metrics you care about into one area and enables you to , at a glance, understand your ad performance.
Universal Stats Support
We finished rolling out our universal stats package to all of our publisher stats. This means that anyone who uses a Lijit product can now get access to all of the analytics we provide. Publishers who only use our ad services have access to new page view reporting in their Audience dashboard, and will continue to see more stats as we make them available.
Advertiser Insights
In case you missed it, we also recently rolled out our new Advertiser Insights analytics. These cool analytics highlight which brands are engaging with your audience, and help publishers by supporting their direct sales efforts and support development of content to attract brand advertisers. Every Lijit publisher receives this data, so login now and check out which brands are most aligned to your site’s audience.
Looking at 2012
More, more, more. We’re excited about continuing to bring publisher’s the information and analytics they need, and helping them build a business around their publication. We’ll continue to improve our publisher analytics tools, and plan to add even more ways to look at your site and your audience to empower you to be a better publisher.
Our advertising platform will continue to grow to support Lijit’s incredible growth, and you can look forward to world class advertising products appearing throughout 2012. Overall, we’re incredibly excited about what we accomplished in 2011, and can’t wait to show you what we have in store for 2012.
Last night Lijit held our annual holiday party at Lucky Pie Pizza in Louisville, CO. With the recent acquisition of Lijit by Federated Media Publishing, it was an honor to have Founder and Executive Chairman John Battelle, as well CEO Deanna Brown in town for the festivities.
Thank you to all the members of the Lijit band that rocked the house last night as well as John Battelle for making a cameo appearance on the drums. Check out his award winning performance here!
Shout out to Lijit rock-stars Manny Puentes, Mike Meredith, Zach Conger, Janessa Ho, Meaghan Kelly, and Zach Miller for keeping us dancing all night long. Rock on.
The holiday party was a great success and a wonderful way to reflect on and celebrate our accomplishments. Check out the photo above of our CEO Todd Vernon going down the long list of Lijit milestones in 2011.
Tags: events, fun, good times, lijit | View Comments
Lijit recently hit 400m average daily ad impressions across our network so to celebrate this major company milestone we took the company go kart racing. It was the perfect activity for the Lijit team – a group of highly competitive, active employees who are in it to win it. While many of us were hoping for “bumper car” style which would allow us to throw some punches at each other, we played by the rules and focused entirely on speed.
Our CEO Todd Vernon is quite the race car driver so in the true spirit of intimidation he showed up with his own helmet (note the Lijit sticker on his helmet in the photo below!). We were placed into three different heats and each heat had two chances to make their best time. The 10 fastest racers made it to the finals… and the winner was? Our very own CEO! Check out the picture of Todd below with his winner’s flag.
Some of us are hobbling around today with bruises, soar limbs, and kinked necks but all in all it was a blast and we hope to be celebrating new milestones with another day of go kart racing in the months to come!
Tags: events, get to know Lijit | View Comments
Introducing Lijit’s Advertiser Insights for online publishers.
Dec 5th
by Sonya Caprio in Company, Lijit publishers, features, release announcements
It is a core company philosophy at Lijit that from an analytics perspective we feed as much data as possible back to our publishers, and that we make the data so easily digestible that you can take immediate action on it. It’s what we like to refer to as “actionable analytics.”
Today Lijit released a new tool as part of our audience analytics platform called Advertiser Insights. Advertiser Insights provides publishers with a list of the top brands that align to your site’s readers. Publishers can use this data to support direct sales efforts as well as to develop editorial content that better attracts top brand advertisers. Any publisher using any of Lijit’s services (ad services, analytics, and/or reader engagement tools) now receives Advertiser Insights in their publisher dashboard – just log in today and check it out!
Simple to digest? Couldn’t be easier.
What’s cool about our new Advertiser Insights data is that it highlights the brands that align to your site’s readers, not just your site itself. It aggregates all of the data we have as readers traverse the entire Lijit network, and provides the information back to publishers to apply directly to your site.
With over 150,000 sites and 300 million global uniques, the Lijit Network continues to grow exponentially. We’ve seen a 700% growth in ad calls in 2011 alone, and currently deliver over 11 billion ad impressions each month. Now that’s a lot of reader data we’re trying to reflect back to publishers!
As we look for new ways to help publishers build their business using valuable analytics, we will continue to leverage the power of the Lijit Network to help publishers grow their site and make more money through targeted advertising. To read more about the value of a network, check out a previous blog post from Lijit’s COO Walter Knapp, “For a Publisher, the Network Matters.”
Tags: Lijit publishers, new features, publishers, release announcements | View Comments
Why Publishers Should Embrace Programmatic Buying
Nov 30th
by Manny Puentes in Company, Lijit publishers, industry, technology
Those who “own” inventory are concerned that through exchanges, advertisers and trading desks have access to the same premium placements at lower CPMs, thereby diluting direct sales opportunities.
As a premium publisher, you probably invest in a sales team to monetize your inventory. You sell a unique readership, social engagement capabilities, contextual relevance, and other site-specific aspects that help value premium inventory at premium prices. Your team works hard to close direct deals with high CPMs to make sure the value of the inventory is not diluted so they can keep cash in their pockets!
On the other side of the coin is the brand advertiser. Brand advertisers also have concerns about exchanges because they are hyper-sensitive to brand alignment. They work hard to protect their brand from the “Wild West” we call the Internet, and are über-sensitive to the variability of content across the web.
Buying direct from premium publishers ensures contextual relevancy and protects against brand conflict. It’s the safe route that allows a brand advertiser to lock in contextually relevant real estate and track ROI.
A “true” private exchange turns potential dilution of inventory, internal struggles with the sales team, and contextual awareness into a big-time publisher opportunity. In a true private exchange, the sales team continues to work with advertisers to sell premium inventory. Let’s not forget what’s important to advertisers: (1) contextual placement and (2) guaranteed inventory/unique(s).
A “true” private exchange gives priority bidding to the select advertisers that have negotiated a higher mid-tier CPM. The CPM is higher than on an open exchange because it’s backed by data, yet lower than a premium CPM because it’s not guaranteed.
The industry needs to embrace true private exchanges. A “true” private exchange solves a real business problem for both the publisher and advertiser:
(1) Publishers can place inventory on a private exchange at a $3-$10 CPMs and offer it to a “select” set of advertisers
(2) Publishers can use the private exchange to build a process and compensation plan for the sales team
3) Advertisers feel safe using a private exchange that guarantees contextual placement and protects against brand conflict.
The private exchange is a true private marketplace where the prioritized advertiser with the highest bid wins.
Tags: ads, blogging, industry, Lijit Advertising Services | View Comments
ad:tech and The Unofficial User Generated Music Party
Nov 16th
by Sonya Caprio in Community, Company
Last week a group of us here at Lijit ventured to New York City for the annual ad:tech New York event. ad:tech is always one of the industry’s biggest events of the year and this year proved to be no different. The event brings together industry professionals from all aspects of the digital space – from the extensive amount of publishers present, to technology providers, and everyone in between, the opportunities for networking and idea sharing were endless!
To kick-off ad:tech, Lijit co-hosted the Unofficial User Generated Music party along with M6D, AdSafe, Audience Science, and Pubmatic. With more than 1,000 people in attendance, the evening was definitely one to be remembered!
The amazing night of entertainment began with an industry band—Something Heavy—and was followed up by rock star live band Karaoke. Lijit’s very own Manny Puentes graced the stage and proved that CTO’s can sing too! Check out pictures from the event below…
A big thank you to all Lijit publishers who came and supported this event as well as our new FMP team members in the New York office!
Tags: fun, good times, industry, lijit, Lijit publishers | View Comments