• by February 26, 2001

Ken Liebeskind

B2B Works, the dominant online advertising placement company for the B2B market, has begun using DoubleClick's DART ad serving system.

The Chicago company had used the Adforce system, but moved to DoubleClick's in an effort to use what it considers the preeminent system. "Nearly three-fourths of the market is DART enabled," says B2B's president/CEO Bill Furlong.

While DART is widely used, B2B Works will be the first company to private label it for the B2B community. The product will be called B2BworksWare powered by DoubleClick.

B2B Works will pay DoubleClick a monthly fee for the use of the system based on the amount of ad serving it does, Furlong says.

B2B Works has made a name for itself by aggregating sites for B2B advertising. It oversees a network of sites, most owned by B2B publishers, which has become a valuable B2B advertising market. Furlong says DART will improve its ability to serve ads, because "we can take all the data we see and build better targeting capabilities," he says. "It allows us to build nuances into our reporting."

The version of DART B2B offers is a customized version with specific B2B applications. DoubleClick will provide customized templates and "we'll do our own data construction in house to customize it," Furlong says.

B2B Works had been thought of as a DoubleClick competitor. Both companies are ad placement firms, although DoubleClick concentrates on the consumer market. When asked why B2B Works would team up with a competitor, Furlong denied they really compete and said it was advantageous for B2B Works to use the technology of a much larger company. "We want to hitch ourselves to a tech leader," he says.

- Ken Liebeskind may be reached at kenrunz@aol.com