• by August 15, 2000

DoubleClick announced yesterday a service that allows sites to swap unsold ad inventory with each other, allowing this space to be used productively to drive traffic to the sites.

This a new twist on the banner exchange concept in which sites trade banner ad impressions over a network of sites, and for every one or more ad impressions on the host site, the host site’s ad is shown on another site.

Sites with unsold inventory can specify a quantity of impressions their sites will serve, and they will automatically receive an equal number of impressions on other leading branded sites on the MediaMatch network. There are no contractual restrictions, and publishers can increase or decrease the number of impressions on a daily basis with no minimums or maximums. MediaMatch uses DoubleClick’s DART (Dynamic Advertising Reporting and Targeting) ad management system to deliver and track all transactions and provide complete back-end reporting. The service has a fee of $0.95 CPM impressions served, considerably less than typical CPM’s, which often range from $2 to $20.

”MediaMatch eliminates having to approach sites directly to swap ads and provides broader reach, more flexibility and cost-efficiency,” says Hal Lehr, Director of MediaMatch for DoubleClick. “If you go to a site directly and do an exchange deal, you’re locked in for the length of the deal even if you could sell the space later,” he adds.

Publishers can have their ads appear on a broad collection of sites within specific content categories including: Business/Finance/Career, Entertainment/News/Music, Search/Portals, Technology, Women/Family/Health, E-Commerce/Shopping/Travel/Auto, Sports/Recreation, and Chat/Mail/Other. While publishers cannot choose which sites their ads will appear on, they can omit two of these eight categories. They also have the ability to choose what ads run on their own sites and ban any unwanted ads.

”With the launch of MediaMatch, we are providing our customers with a unique value proposition,” said Jonathan Heller, VP Business Management, DoubleClick Media. “We expect this to be especially attractive to publishers as we are enabling them to use excess inventory while driving new traffic to their sites.”

MediaMatch will be offered to DoubleClick and Sonar clients. Current MediaMatch clients include NYDailyNews.com, HotJobs.com, and iVillage.com. “DoubleClick continues to provide efficient and effective advertising solutions,” said Jonathan Beck, Supervisor of New Media Advertising Sales, NY Daily News. “MediaMatch is a great new way for us to use unsold ad inventory and drive new traffic to our site while we focus on offering quality content.”

MediaMatch provides more control than banner exchanges, which typically don’t provide much back-end tracking or control over which ads appear on the host site. This service’s 1:1 ad exchange rate is also advantageous compared to many banner exchanges which offer 2:1 display rates or higher.

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