The self-service
online advertising platform BizAds from Bizo that launched Wednesday enables marketers to reach more than 60 million targetable business users regardless of size and budget. The company hopes to
create scale for companies that didn't have access to these tools in the past.
Bizo, which supported larger companies, just wasn't set up to take campaign investments from small businesses
that wanted to spend less than $5,000 per month. Now those companies that can only spend $5 per day come in and set up online accounts, according to Russell Glass, Bizo chief executive officer. "We
let these customers spend up to $300 per day to reach the right audience through this self-service marketplace," he says.
A cookie dropped in the browser of business users matches data coming
from Dun & Bradstreet, McGraw Hill, or other Bizo partners.
Glass doesn't expect that existing clients will move to the self-service model, but does think it will attract small businesses Bizo
has had to turn away in the past. Most large companies prefer the pampering and hand-holding because they can afford to invest the money in the campaigns. Second, the lower volume makes the price for
targeting ads a little more expensive.
Those who choose to go the self-service route have email support. The platform allows clients to create a text ad within the interface, or upload an
existing creative. It took Bizo engineers about six months to build. And while those two quarters equate to about 25% of Bizo's existence, "many of those core capabilities are already in place," Glass
says.
The scaled-down version of Bizo's platform for large companies needed an interface with a billing architecture to accept credit cards that allow people to sign up and register for the
service.
Replicon, which provides timesheets and expense-tracking services as a hosted app, became one of the initial clients testing the service. The company claims to see immediate benefits
from BizAds.
Both Medforma and Replicon have been testing the platform. Replicon, which provides timesheets and expense-tracking software as a hosted service, sees the immediate benefits of
BizAds for small- to mid-sized businesses and plans to use the platform to enhance how it reaches its clients, which are businesses.
BizAds offers demographic targeting based on the company's
"bizographic" data, including company size, seniority, job function, industry and location. By giving marketers access to specific details about their audiences, BizAds reduces irrelevant impressions
and improves brand saturation with the audiences that matter. As a result, marketers gain qualified and responsive leads from those seeing targeted ads on Bizo-supported Web sites.