• by OMMA Magazine Writers , March 27, 2007

David Moore is Chairman and CEO of 24/7 Real Media, Inc., an interactive marketing company offering online media, search, ad serving, and analytics services.

He has led 24/7 Real Media's growth from start-up to its current position as a global company with 20 offices in 12 countries.

An industry veteran with more than 20 years' experience in new media property development, he serves as a board member of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Previously, he held positions at Turner Broadcasting and Viacom. He co-founded Petry Interactive, which eventually became 24/7 Real Media.

Describe what 24/7 Real Media does and how its mission has changed over time?

24/7 Real Media is a global digital marketing company. The biggest part of our business today is search, which involves managing budgets and pay-per-click campaigns across the major search engines. We also are an ad network, selling online ads on behalf of Web sites in North America, the UK, France, and Australia that sell their inventory to us. And we license our ad management technology, Open AdStream, to over 850 Web sites including Forbes.com and Playboy.com.

Search is growing 60 percent annually, the fastest, accounting for 45 percent of our revenue.

We launched the pay-per-click business in August 2004, when we purchased Australian shop Decide Interactive and its technology, Decide DNA, which automates and optimizes keyword buying. We took the Decide DNA technology, distributed it through all our offices, and grew the search business from roughly $7 million in 2004 to $85 million today.

How is your company addressing publishers' need to monetize consumer-generated content and online video?

Video is the fastest growing advertising format that we sell. We also have a long history selling ads around user-generated content space. We previously sold ads on Lycos' Angelfire - one of the first companies that enabled user-generated content.

What are your company's goals this year and over the next 18 months?

As part of our recent joint venture in Asia with Japan's largest ad agency, Dentsu, we intend to continue to expand globally, opening new offices in China, India, Taiwan, and Thailand. We're always on the lookout for businesses that can complement what we're doing. Also, we will continue to focus on ways to improve how we execute campaigns across global markets.

What are the most vexing issues facing your business right now?

One of the biggest issues facing our industry is the lack of automation in the online advertising industry. It is way behind off-line advertising in terms of automating processes for things like search-engine marketing, where major brands still analyze their campaign performance using Excel spreadsheets, or even manually. This lack of automation is costly and inefficient. What's more, it limits the effectiveness and ROI potential of campaigns, because by the time they've analyzed the data and made a decision, they've lost countless opportunities to connect with their intended audience. 

Another issue that we face is the reluctance of traditional advertisers to spend appropriately on digital media. Research shows that consumers now devote more time to the Internet than to watching TV. And yet most major advertisers devote a disproportionately low portion of their budget to digital media. The trend is definitely moving in the right direction as companies like ours educate advertisers on the vast targeting and delivery capabilities of digital media.

If you were not in your present position, what would you most like to do?

I'll never retire. Staying active is the key to longevity. However, I do believe that to succeed in business and to fail at home is to fail completely. So balance in one's life is very important to me. However, if I weren't running 24/7 Real Media, I would be an even more active participant in triathlons, tennis, golf, skiing, etc., while working on various business projects. And I love working with start-ups - which just might be the place you would find me working again.