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Investors in a Boston startup have bet $600,000 they can get you to stop ignoring website banner ads. And clients that have agreed with the investors include none other than our next president.
Adroit Interactive LLC is seeded with funds from a handful of angel investors, and aims to allow advertisers to change content on the fly without making multiple premium ad buys.
President-elect Barack Obama used the service to tailor banner ad messages for voters in swing states with different economic priorities, said Adroit co-founder and CEO Judy Gern. The cable channel ESPN has promoted its broadband video site, espn360.com, with banner ads that automatically pull in fresh game results and schedules.
Adroit’s platform is also designed to allow advertisers to write a script that automatically tries different messages, graphics, products and information with specific groups of users, until it hits on a combination that works.
“Editing is one thing,” Gern said. “Automated testing is another.”
Advertising expert David Hallerman, a senior analyst with New York-based eMarketer Inc., said relevance is key for banner ads competing with search. But he cautioned that advertisers may get what they pay for by avoiding premium ad buys.
“Buying (ads in) a block is a question about placement,” he said. “It can cost less, but it’s not necessarily the world’s best value if the placement is on secondary or tertiary pages.”
Gern co-founded Adroit after leaving her account director position at the interactive marketing agency Carat Fusion Inc. in 2005. She had joined Carat in 2002 after the U.S. division of U.K.-based Aegis acquired her previous startup, a Framingham-based e-marketing services company she co-founded with Alan Osetek called Vizium. Also co-founding Adroit with Gern was Wenni Wang, another former Vizium employee. Wang remains an investor, but is no longer actively involved in company operations, Gern said. A November regulatory filing also names New York-based Noah Goodhart and Gregory Smith as investors in Adroit’s seed round.
The seed funds came after the company had already seen some growth, Gern said, although she declined to specifically state the company’s revenue thus far. “What I didn’t want to do was immediately raise money,” she said. “I wanted to see what could be done without that.”
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