• by Kate Kaye , November 6, 2002

Call it the case of the neglected stepchild.

After nearly five years under Engage’s proverbial lock and key, online ad company Accipiter Solutions, Inc. has flown the coop and is poised to take on the competition.

The firm, which was acquired by CMGI and merged into its Engage division in March of 1998, plans to stick to its roots, focusing on the development, sales, and marketing of its online advertising products, AdManager and AdBureau, as well as providing support to its more than 300 customers across the globe.

CEO Brian Handly and VP sales, Jeff Wood are among the Accipiter vets who will lead the way. Both emit a sense of relief that the company is back where it belongs. And it’s been a bumpy ride. In a few short years, Engage has struggled to juggle its online advertising operations and interactive media business.

A bit of history: In 1996, CMGI ventured online by creating majority-owned Engage. Within three years, CMGI had become fully entrenched in its mission to compete with dominant category players, DoubleClick and 24/7 Real Media (then 24/7 Media) by sucking several online ad serving and management related operations into the Engage vacuum. Among them were Accipiter, ad network Flycast, and Web marketing management outfit AdKnowledge.

Eventually, Engage ceased all ad serving and shut down its media business entirely. Massive layoffs and numerous divestments have ensued, recently culminating in CMGI’s forgiveness of 60 million dollars in debt and retirement of ownership. The much barer-bones Engage is now having a go at the ad and marketing production software business, setting its sites on retail and consumer products goods companies.

It seems like a miracle Accipiter survived at all.

Explains Handly, “We existed despite Engage’s direction. There was very little marketing effort or sales effort put on online ad management software. We existed in spite of that.”

The Raleigh, North Carolina-based company, now 90% employee-owned, plans to focus on its core online ad management business, working with current customers including Microsoft, Bankrate, Travelocity, and overseas clients such as LookSmart (Australia), Tiscali (Italy) and WebAds (Holland).

Accipiter has just released a new version of its ad management business platform, AdManager V6 which features a simplified process through a user interface redesign, a NYTimes.com Surround Session-style feature called eSessions, and automatic campaign optimization based on ad creative performance. The firm also offers a hosted version called AdBureau V6 and enables customers to move back and forth between it and its licensed platform.

Why continue on in this DoubleClick ruled arena? Responds Handly, “We’re not DoubleClick, but that plays to our advantage. We can provide very good customer support and give lots of attention to mid-tier customers; but we plan to go after our competitors’ customers as well.”

Although Accipiter would “like to have some DoubleClick business,” according to VP sales, Jeff Wood, there are plenty of new markets, Fortune 100 companies, and publishers with expiring contracts to tackle. He adds, “We’re a profitable company and have a pretty decent pipeline already set up. We just want to grow at steady pace.”