• by Tameka Kee , June 20, 2007

Exponential Interactive, parent company of the Tribal Fusion ad network, announced the launch of Expo9, a free ad server for publishers.

More than 100 clients--including Intermarkets (ad manager for sites such as DrudgeReport.com)--have been testing Expo9, which is currently serving a reported 20 billion ads onto the Tribal Fusion network. Exponential will make it available full-scale in July.

The platform allows publishers to manage multiple campaigns and advertising partners through a single interface, with technology that figures out how to maximize revenue on every ad call by serving the most relevant ad to each user.

"The value of ad serving is not in pure delivery of an ad to a user," said Alistair Goodman, vice president of strategic marketing, Exponential. "It's about optimizing the technology to gain a higher effective CPM for each publisher, and the industry is starting to recognize that."

Amidst growing speculation that major players like Google will make their industrial-strength ad servers free, companies like Exponential and London-based Openads have sought to be far ahead of the curve.

The Expo9 server differs from some free ad-serving solutions in that publishers don't have to download or host the platform themselves. Exponential has also integrated its suite of digital marketing tools--including local search and contextual solutions--into the server, giving publishers a number of ways to monetize their inventory.

Kevin Lucido, CEO of Intermarkets, said: "We've been leveraging the Expo9 free ad-serving solution for several months. It has been a reliable, scalable solution that has enabled us to effectively monetize our properties and reduce costs."