• by May 29, 2002

The big online ad networks (and even some of the smaller ones) all have their own in-house ad-serving technology. But ad serving has become so lucrative that networks are now licensing out their technology to third-party clients. There are now more than a dozen ad servers that individual websites can call upon to track and serve ads. Reports are given to clients in real-time, lists can be managed, campaigns created, and more. Competitive advantages in this category center on the degrees of targeting, pricing, client base, and hosting location.

bluestreakWith a new CEO, an investment from AOL, and the acquisition of 3rd party ad sever Adknowledge, Bluestreak has completely re-invented themselves as the Great "Blue" Hope: the leading contender to go up against DoubleClick in the fight for dominance in the field of 3rd party ad serving. With the luxury of hindsight, Bluestreak has been able to lend a fresh eye to the ad serving industry, virtually eliminating ad server discrepancies with their innovative new approach. With their BlueEyes optimization software they have also been able to dramatically boost campaign performance by two and three hundred percent with the press of a button. And the experience they have gained in serving their own rich media ads has given them a leg up in knowing how to serve all rich media types.

24/7 24/7 is in the midst of licensing out their ad serving technology, Connect. Connect has a feature called admatcher, which receives an ad request, selects the appropriate creative to run, and delivers it in less than 1 millisecond. Connect supports most rich media, and does not hold on to client data, which belongs exclusively to the client. Connect targets users geographically and by keyword, operating system, and browser.

OpenAdStreamWhen it comes to the quantity of impressions served, Real Media’s Open AdStream is unsurpassed. OAS serves 200 billion impressions a month, four times the number of DoubleClick’s DART. Some 850 clients, representing over 2,000 websites, use OAS, which gives control of user data and campaign information to the publishers, safeguarding privacy. OAS manages inventory, gives reports, and serves various kinds of content. It also has add-on modules for clients, which include privacy proxy, cookie targeting, and multi-account management.

DoubleClickDoubleClick DART (Dynamic Advertising Reporting Targeting) serves 2 billion ads a day, making it the second-largest ad server based on monthly impressions. In its latest iteration, DART 5 recently added wireless, rich media, and iTV targeting into the mix to drive revenue to clients. DARTmail is another part of the ad-serving platform, serving ads into emails (both HTML and text), and giving the client the capability to create tailored emails and view reported impressions delivered and click-through rates.