Evangelist-backed China Portal Chooses NetGravity AdServer

Zhaodaola Internet (Beijing)
Limited, the China portal that is financially backed by American evangelist
and former presidential candidate Pat Robertson, is now offering NetGravity’s AdServer Network
application to its advertisers and clients.

“We’re excited about being the portal that introduces new Internet
technology to China,” said Ruby Yu, Zhaodaola’s general manager.

“By investing in advanced technology and using it to benefit our clients
and users, not only do we act as a market leader, we also help them tap
into all the incredible potential of the Internet,” added Yu.

Zhaodaola was launched in February this year but was promoted by Robertson
in the fall of last year during a visit to China.

So far, Netgravity’s AdServer has not caught on in Asia because of its
price tag and the nascent nature of the Internet ad market in the region,
according to one industry observer. Typically, Netgravity has only been
able to close deals with big clients such as the leading telecoms or ISPs
in each market.

“NetGravity has totally missed the mark in Asia, they really should have
been giving all their support to the smaller ICPs and ad networks, and
building the entire market from the ground up,” said one Netgravity
customer who is considering changing to another vendor.

However, as the market develops, more and more Asian content providers like
Zhaodaola, who have the necessary financial backing, may be able to afford
such ad management technologies.

“NetGravity is not only enterprise level mission critical software, it’s also
in the middle of the revenue stream,” said Jason Martin, director of
technology at NetGravity Asia Pacific. “As such, it needs to dynamically serve
the right ad at the right time to the right person every second of the day.”

“This kind of operational uptime and the rich functionality that’s provided
comes at a price,” continued Martin. “But given that many companies build
their businesses
around NetGravity’s technology, this price is relatively small.”

Martin indicated that Zhaodaola was dynamic and farsighted enough to
realize the functionality of Adserver in generating revenue.

“NetGravity does recognize that there are some potential
customers that for various reason cannot commit to owning and operating
enterprise level software of this nature,” said Martin. “These include
small and medium
sized sites as well as companies like advertising agencies that don’t have a
technology focus.”

The company has just rolled out a service called AdCenter in the Asia
Pacific which, according to Martin, allows customers to use NetGravity’s
functionality in a service
offering.

“In addition to the benefit of a pay-as-you-use-it pricing model,
the client can at anytime in the future migrate to a software solution,”
said Martin.

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