• by Shankar Gupta , March 15, 2007

Ad network ContextWeb Wednesday completed a rollout of its new pricing model, which allows publishers to select the rates at which they wish their ad space to be sold, and serves ads into that space only if that price is met by the company's sales force.

The aim is to attract publishers by offering them the chance to move their bottom line, said ContextWeb Senior Vice President of Strategic Products and Business Development Jay Sears--allowing them to take ads from ContextWeb if the company meets their asking price, and from other networks if they don't.

"Publishers today are mercenary--they want the best price," he said. "Our 'name your pricing' program is designed to play into that, and to allow them to demand the best from all of their ad networks, and then come to us and give us a price that's 10% or 20% higher, and tell us to jump over the bar."

ComScore Network's February 2007 advertising network rankings placed ContextWeb as the 15th-largest ad network in terms of audience and reach, with 47,462 unique visitors--reaching 27.2% of the total Internet population.

The top three ad networks are Advertising.com, ValueClick and Tribal Fusion, with 85.6%, 75.9%, and 70.1% reach, respectively.