DoubleClick Inks Search Reseller Pacts
Online ad technology firm DoubleClick announced on Tuesday that it signed separate reseller agreements with two search-marketing companies to offer clients more tools in the booming search sector.
DoubleClick turned to iProspect for algorithmic search services, which optimize a Web site to appear more often in search engines’ non-paid results. DoubleClick also signed an agreement with TrafficLeader for paid-inclusion services, which submit certain pages of Web sites to be included in the index search engines crawl.
With the agreements, DoubleClick can offer more search offerings to clients without either building its own capabilities or buying a search-marketing firm of its own.
DoubleClick’s sales force will offer clients search services from both iProspect and TrafficLeader. Both partners will tap into data from DoubleClick’s DART technology to bolster their services.
DoubleClick already offers clients the ability to traffic and track their paid search campaigns via DART platform.
Rival 24/7 Real Media last week renamed its own search unit, Website Results, to 24/7 Search. The company acquired Website Results in October 2001.
GoToast Adds Bid Tools
Search marketing firm Go Toast announced on Monday a set of bid-management tools that it said would help search advertisers to focus their keyword programs on their pre-set goals.
The company said its “Power Rules” would act as a subset of its bid-management feature. The new rules include a cost-per-acquisition rule that matches the ideal keyword bid with the advertiser’s budget constraints. Other rules do the same based on an advertiser’s return on advertising spend needs or daily budget.
The rules are automated, so advertisers just need to set parameters and the system will handle the bid adjustment. The system can manage keyword campaigns on a variety of paid search programs, including Overture, Google AdWords, and FindWhat.
24/7 Real Media Adds Patent
24/7 Real Media said on Thursday that it was awarded a patent for the delivery of sequenced advertising through the Internet, interactive TV or mobile phones.
The company said late last month the U.S. Patent Office awarded it U.S. Patent No. 6,601,041, titled “Method of Providing Targeted Advertisements to a Computer Mediated Network.” The patent, which broadly covers showing users a series of related ads in a so-called “storyboard” format, will complement 24/7 Real Media’s to patent, No. 6,026,368, in the company’s patent-licensing program.
24/7 Real Media has been an aggressive defender of its patents in the past. Patent 368, which broadly covers delivering targeted advertising online, has been the subject of a number of lawsuits filed by 24/7 Real Media. It has licensed the patent to competitors like DoubleClick, ValueClick and Advertising.com, after filing legal claims against each company.
24/7 Real Media said it had recently licensed the patented technology to two additional companies. A total of six companies have licensed the ad-serving technology.
Last month, 24/7 Real Media announced that it concluded the patent covered the generation of paid listings, giving it further grounds to extract licensing royalties from companies in the lucrative paid search business. It also claimed that another of its patents, No. 5,446,919, applied to cable operators that target advertising by audience demographics to TVs with set-top boxes.
In its recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, 24/7 Real Media said it spent $1.4 million in the second quarter pursuing patent litigation.