• by Amy Corr , Staff Writer @MediaPostOTL, May 29, 2002

Fastclick began serving and selling ads in September 2000. It currently serves 750 million impressions monthly and reps 5,500 websites on a nonexclusive basis. Among the network’s clients are X10, Orbitz, Qwest, and AT&T.

Through Fastclick’s performance targeting, click-throughs and post-click tracking for each category and each website in the network are available. Websites and creatives that are not faring well can be taken out of a campaign’s rotation by one of two ways: either manually by an advertiser, or via an automatic optimization setting based on set CPA and/or CTR goals.

Fastclick just launched a new ad format, the 120x600 skyscraper, and plans to launch an ad serving solution in early 2002. Its current ad-serving technology is strictly in-house, except for the pop-up windows, which are sold as a throughput charge in an ASP model.

Fastclick.net has been working its way up on Nielsen//NetRatings Top 25 advertising domains. With the week ending October 7, Fastclick.net was the number 15 advertising domain with 23 million impressions reaching almost 5 percent of the Internet audience. What has propelled this year-old network into the top 25? Pop-unders. Fastclick serves hundreds of millions of pop-unders monthly, but they only account for 20 percent of the network’s monthly ad impressions.

Fastclick adheres to rigorous frequency capping of pop-unders. Web users who visit a Fastclick site are only served one pop-under per session and will not be served a pop-under from the same client within a seven day span. According to Jeffrey Hirsch, Fastclick’s chief sales and marketing officer, pop-unders will continue to be a cornerstone in the network.

“Pop-under advertising is legitimized by the rock-solid, consistent results that our advertisers experience. Pop-unders are eye-catching, often more so than banners, and when used correctly with frequency capping and other important parameters, are very effective. Fastclick maintains quality controls that ensure pop-under effectiveness and viability, which include frequency capping on both a user session and campaign basis. We have seen pop-under results often exceeding five times that of banner advertising. The message must be clear, offer oriented, and easy to act on. If these parameters are met, and appropriate frequency capping is implemented, this format performs phenomenally.”