• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 17, 2010

Media Contacts, the interactive media agency of Havas Digital, has named vertical ad network Adify as a preferred ad network for developing custom networks on behalf of clients.

"We are streamlining our business to partner with the best and most strategic partners for our clients," said Ed Montes, managing director, Havas Digital North America, in a statement. "We selected Adify Media as a preferred network because it delivers unmatched quality of audience and transparency."

Adify, a unit of Cox Enterprises, operates more than 200 niche networks, including those run by Six Apart, Pajama Media, the Travel Channel and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. It claims a total audience of more than 109 million and has a proprietary ad-targeting solution to select sites where certain users spend more than 25% of their time.

Media Contacts plans to take advantage of that technology in creating branded networks for clients in the travel, health care and retail sectors beginning in the second quarter and launching one or two each quarter during the rest of the year.

"The big question is can a customized network focused around content deliver higher engagement than another form of targeting, and that's what we're most interested in finding out with this approach," said Adam Kasper, managing director of digital innovation at Media Contacts.

While he would not detail exactly what the networks would entail, they likely feature branded content across individual sites and may include third-party affinity advertising as well like other Adify networks. In gauging the success of these efforts, Kasper said the agency would look more to traditional brand metrics such as awareness and consideration rather than conversions or clicks.

"It's a good thing to have a network focused on these type of upper-funnel metrics because that's the way for digital to gain share of brand budgets," said Kasper. Media Contacts boasts a wide range of major brands including Coca-Cola, Audi, Citibank, Delta and Ikea.

Rather than seeking particular audiences or affluent consumers through Adify, the agency is looking for new ways to engage clients' existing users. "We're partnering on this because we found [Adify's] technology to be of potentially large value and not because they deliver a specific demographic," he said. "Hopefully, they can deliver whatever audiences we need."