• by January 31, 2001

By Amy Corr

Ad serving technology has become more advanced in recent years, and emerging software, affordable to start-up companies, can now support the impression volume of large ad networks. One such provider is Thruport Technologies, which owns, operates and sells a software program called AdJuggler, devised by Bruce Waldack in 1996, the founder of digitalNATION, a server hosting company recently sold to Verio.

AdJuggler enables websites to serve, support and manage their advertising impressions all through one server. In a structured fashion, you can view client’s statistics on a weekly or monthly basis, add and remove old/new clients, change creative and more.

Adjuggler’s creator, Bruce Waldack, noticed a need for such an ad serving technology, both for the advanced networks and the small websites. At digitalNATION, he says, “we constantly had customers that were asking us for solutions to manage ad sales, ad reporting and content rotation. AdJuggler was built from the ground up as a multi-platform application that gave our customers the power to generate ad sales and to report to their advertisers on the success or failure of ad campaigns or content rotation."

Two companies to recently choose AdJuggler’s serving technology are Elinux.com and Worldweb.net.

AdJuggler software can be purchased for a one-time fee plus a yearly support cost, or you can host AdJuggler through Thruport’s server and pay a one-time set-up charge along with a monthly fee. There are 6 levels of AdJuggler software available.

Pricing ranges from $499.00 (plus a $99.00 yearly support charge) for the AdJuggler Classic to $56,000.00 (plus a $7,500 yearly support charge) for the AdJuggler Enterprise 3. Each software level, except AdJuggler Enterprise 3, contains limits to the number of impressions you can serve daily. But the good news is, if your company grows and the volume of impression you serve heightens, you may upgrade your software at any time. Having a vast selection of software levels available makes life easier for both the large networks as well as the little fish.

The higher the software level, the more advanced your technological options become. For example, AdJuggler Classic allows low- to medium traffic websites to support rich media. While AdJuggler Enterprise can serve ads to multiple sites, ad networks, ISPs, and can easily meet the needs of high traffic websites. If you have trouble setting up AdJuggler, Thruport’s technical support is only an email away, with a response time of 10 minutes to less than 2 hours.

If you are not the commitment type and prefer to have your banners served through Thruport instead of buying the software, they have a solution for that too. Called Hosted AdJuggler, the website has 4 plans to choose from. Plan A handles up to 100,000 impressions and the set up cost is a mere $125 with a monthly payment of the same amount. This averages out to a CPM of $1.45, which is a minimal price to pay to a company that wi