The effort by adMarketplace to displace Google AdSense on publisher sites continues. The New York-based independent marketplace has added one more exclusive publisher relationship to its coffer. Forbes has signed a deal that allows the search advertising company to match queries with text ads from brand advertisers on Forbes.com.
Apparently, Google continues to have a difficult month, losing the Bloomberg.com search business to adMarketplace and Mozilla Firefox to Yahoo.
Forbes.com reached more than 27.5 million unique readers in September, per Compete data, ranking 47 in the list of sites. More than half, or 53%, of the Web site traffic comes from general portals and search that unique visitors share. adMarketplace expects this traffic to drive "exceptional" advertiser results, particularly in the finance and retail verticals.
Adam Epstein, president and COO at adMarketplace, said "it's a bit more like a custom monetization partnership compared with going to a monopoly and taking an ad tag and slapping it on a page."
The custom search monetization strategy means that adMarketplace's creative team works with Forbes.com brand and product team to build ads that reflect the look and feel of the site to better support its readers, Epstein said.
When asked the total number of ads serving up across its network of publisher sites, Epstein referenced Compete data. "When you look at our Compete data, it's about 100 million unique users see our ads monthly in the United States," he said. "It's the largest search network outside Google and Yahoo."
Interesting.