• by June 27, 2007

PointRoll, the Gannett subsidiary that has served over 100 billion rich media ads since its launch in 2000, will transfer all 1,500 (or so) of its clients this weekend to AdPortal--a new system that combines previously separate design, publishing and tracking capabilities into one platform.

As an added bonus, PointRoll will formally offer agencies and marketers the ability to serve all other online ads--i.e., Flash and GIF--along with rich media.

This new one-stop shop for advertisers uses Web 2.0 technology to create a "user-intuitive interface," said Jason Tafler, PointRoll's senior vice president of global business operations and strategy, explaining that "clients wanted more access to these tools in one place."

"Now that these tools and processes have been combined into a single platform and user interface," said PointRoll CEO Chris Saridakis in a statement, "marketers will be able to effectively build and deliver even better rich media campaigns, specifically targeted and with measurable ROI."

But, even for those still locked into separate creative and media functions, AdPortal promises to deliver significant improvements over the old system.

For creative agencies, Tafler told OnlineMediaDaily, new design tools will make it easy to create complex rich media ads.

For media agencies, Tafler continued, "it's easy to work with us to traffic all ads across thousands of publications." And the analytics function will allow for tracking and reporting on more than 100 different metrics.

As for those non-rich media ads, Tafler pointed out that just a few years ago, PointRoll's clients were using the company for the 10-20% of their online ads that used rich media. Now, with "a lot of these clients shifting 60 to 80% of their budgets" into rich media, Tafler said they were asking PointRoll, "Why do we have to use another system" for that remaining percentage?

PointRoll certainly had the ability to do other kinds of ad serving--and indeed, has been doing that "behind the scenes" for a while, Tafler said. He added that "several big clients" now do all their ad serving with PointRoll, although he said he couldn't disclose any names at this point.

AdPortal has been in development over the past year, according to Tafler, and clients will have a "slight migration period of several weeks," during which PointRoll will provide basic training for the new platform.