ValueClick Eyes Q4 Profits
Despite a lagging online advertising market, ad network ValueClick reported higher revenues and a narrowed net loss in the third quarter, while predicting it would be in the black next quarter.
The Westlake Village, Calif.-based company brought in revenues of $17.3 million in the quarter, up 68 percent from the same period a year ago. Net loss fell from $1.4 million to $786,000. ValueClick’s balance sheet continued to bulge at $263.3 million. The quarter was the first the company fully included the results from its Be Free acquisition.
“Although the overall advertising industry continues to experience softness, we are very proud that ValueClick and all its subsidiaries are adding brand name advertisers and further developing our product offerings,” said James Zarly, ValueClick’s chairman and chief executive. “The integration of Be Free is on track, as is our plan for profitability in the fourth quarter, and we look forward to 2003 with cautious optimism.”
For the past two years, ValueClick has sought to vary its online marketing offerings beyond the company’s predominantly cost-per-action and cost-per-click network. In March, the company inked a $128 million deal for affiliate network provider Be Free. In 2000, the company acquired a logfile analysis firm, a co-registration play, and another performance-based ad network. In 2001, ValueClick acquired MediaPlex, a provider of online ad serving technology and agency software.
ValueClick is partially owned by DoubleClick, which recently reported depressed earnings in the midst of a sluggish ad market that showed few signs of a quick rebound.
EyeWonder Rolls Out Rich Media Tool For Agencies
Streaming media firm EyeWonder announced the launch of EyeStudio 3.0, authoring software that enables agencies to produce rich media ad and e-mail campaigns.
EyeStudio, which is built on EyeWonder’s EYERIS G3 technology, allows users to copy and paste images, text or video to build streaming-media ads. After completion, the ads can be posted directly to a Web site or e-mailed.
The Java-based streaming media does not require a player for end users, with EyeWonder estimating 95 percent of Internet users able to see the rich media. EyeWonder can give advertisers feedback about how long users interacted with the rich media ad.
“EyeStudio is one of the key elements of EyeWonder’s product offering designed for rich media delivery over the Internet and corporate intranets,” Sid Mike Griffin, EyeWonder’s senior vice president of marketing.
EyeStudio 3.0 is available for $1,499.
In July, EyeWonder was among a host of rich media providers to ink deals with Yahoo! in the portal’s attempt to streamline the process of creating and distributing rich media advertising on its network.
Rich media has developed a foothold in the online advertising market, with Jupiter Research predicting it will account for 22 percent of all Internet advertising in five years’ time.
RedSheriff Nets ATP
Internet analytics firm RedSheriff announced it signed a deal to provide the traffic analysis across all of the ATP’s Web sites.
The ATP, which is the governing body of men’s tennis, created The Tennis Internet Group to operate its Web sites. TIG operates 18 ATP sites for tournaments and the ATP Masters Series, in addition to a site for Alex Corretja, the first player site it has run.
Using RedSheriff’s Customer Intelligence software, the ATP will get snapshots of how various visitor demographics interact with its 19 sites, both individually and collectively.
New York-based RedSheriff competes with WebSideStory and NetIQ in the Web analytics market. In March teamed up with SageMetrics to jointly market an all-in-one data-mining product.
