• by August 2, 2007

Some five months after launching AuctionAds with ShoeMoney Media Group--and seeing the new ad network rapidly grow to more than 25,000 participating publishers--MediaWhiz Holdings has bought out its partner's two-thirds majority interest.

Combining keyword targeting with a publisher network, AuctionAds uses a downloaded widget that shows live eBay auction ads related to site content. When a user clicks on an AuctionAds listing and then makes a transaction or registers on eBay, a site gets paid. Patrick Gavin, president of MediaWhiz's display advertising division, said he was surprised at how fast AuctionAds took off, and that the service works well in combination with the company's TextLinkAds and reviewme.com.

For his part, Shoemoney Media co-founder Jeremy Schoemaker explained in his blog that MediaWhiz possessed the necessary experience and know-how in customer service and ad network payouts.

Schoemaker wrote that AuctionAds was "arguably the biggest launch of any advertising network, ever," with its large number of publishers already "displaying more than 300 million AuctionAds ads per day."