• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 16, 2011

aiMatch, an ad-serving company that recently signed five new publishers, has begun to build custom features in its dashboard that allow clients to pull in back-end data and analyze a variety of metrics such as spend from top advertisers -- or provide revenue estimates if specific ad packages are sold differently.

Popcornflix, Healthnews, Midwest Communications, DNS of Australia, and TRN of New Zealand have signed separate agreements with aiMatch, for ad-serving technology developed by several former Microsoft executives.

The next step is to bring into the dashboard more information around audiences and Web site visitors, as well as data from third parties, such as demand-side platforms or ad exchanges. Features such as reconciliation and billing are being tested with one client, according to Chris Hanburger, vice president of global sales at aiMatch.

Several features shipped with the product include data related to request for proposals and insertion orders, along with financials to deliver inventory forecasting into the hands of salespeople. A business intelligence suite on the back end of the ad-serving platform enables advertisers to gain the information on yield management, rather than go through a third-party company.

The dashboard lets companies analyze the data across campaigns. "We haven't solved the world's problems, but made operations people and chief revenue officers and VPs of sales more efficient and informed about running their business against goals," Hanburger said. "Ad-serving companies talk about analytics, but it's really tied to impressions. They don't have the order information and financial information tied to the campaigns."

Darren Kelly, chief revenue officer at Photobucket, said the "band" got back together. These are the original ad-serving guys from years gone by who built Microsoft Atlas. "They are the old dogs who began the ad-serving business," he said. "One day they woke up and decided to try it again, but build in better tools."

Photobucket began using the aiMatch in summer 2010. Kelly said switching out ad-serving platforms is similar to "open heart surgery -- it makes ad operations professionals go white in the face." The platform never dropped an impression. The switch was flipped one day in July, and everything has served perfectly since. The site, which allows people to share, create and store photos and videos, serves about 2 billion monthly impressions.

As for aiMatch, the dashboard lets companies like Photobucket analyze the data across campaigns.

Publishers want information on sell-through rates, product overlap, trends of sales across indirect vs. direct channels and data on sales performance management. They need information on available inventory and associating revenue with it.

The platform, which took two years to build, launched in March 2010 and now serves up about 10 billion ads monthly. It supports 14 customers across five continents. "Last month, we signed two customers, and the month prior, four customers," Hanburger said. "While we were at Microsoft, publishers asked us for tools like this, so we set off on our own to build what people want."