• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, December 7, 2004

The already crowded contextual marketing field will become even denser today with the launch of a new network by Conducive Corporation's adMarketplace, a New York-based company. The company, which has powered advertising on eBay since 2003, so far has lined up 60 publishers--mainly of travel, dating, or finance sites--and several thousand advertisers.

adMarketplace puts image-based ads on Web pages that contain content related to the advertisers' products. "We feel you can say more in a picture than a text link," said Jim Waltz, CEO of both Conducive Corporation and adMarketplace. Advertisers bid on keywords and pay on a cost-per-click basis.

The company is a late entrant to the contextual marketing space, which already includes established players such as Google, Kanoodle, IndustryBrains, and Quigo. Waltz said adMarketplace originally intended to get an earlier start, but was "derailed" by its work with eBay. "We focused most of our attention on the eBay relationship," he said. "eBay has been our testbed." adMarketplace quietly began trying out its contextual marketing service with several publishers and advertisers about five months ago. Because the field is so congested, adMarketplace might have a hard time establishing a foothold, said JupiterResearch analyst Niki Scevak. "The problem, from a competitive standpoint, is that there's simply an oversuppply," he said. "Publishers have complete control."