• Ad Age, Friday, September 17, 2010 12:28 AM

Brand.net is releasing a new buying platform that would allow advertisers to purchase page views at specific prices ahead of time, a specialized form of hedging. The tool forecasts what prices for online ads will be at a future date within a particular category, such as entertainment or automobiles.

Brand.net will set a price on CPMs, which the ad agency can buy ahead of time. In actuality, Brand.net will not own any inventory of pages but will instead log the price and bill clients. The company will only insert the buy order at the intended buy dates across ad networks and exchanges. Should its forecasting technology set a lower price than the actual price on the intended buy dates, Brand.net absorbs the loss. In the reverse case, the company will pocket the difference.

On the online front, some analysts say Apple's iAd platform, which will create dynamic ads that are easily tailored and implemented on the iPhone and iPad, has the first big shot at making mobile ads worthwhile. Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz disagrees. Bartz takes umbrage with the fact that, like the devices these ads would be on, Apple has ultimate control. And that means advertisers are taking risks by committing resources to a platform that could change or reject anything at any time.

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