Technology Will Extend Ad Optimization Intelligence Within the Rubicon Project’s Online Advertising Infrastructure
LOS ANGELES – the Rubicon Project, the Internet advertising infrastructure company, has acquired Others Online, the audience optimization company, to further expand its ad optimization platform. The acquisition is part of an aggressive effort by the Rubicon Project to further build out its platform to deliver premium Web publishers the most effective monetization of their audiences and inventory.
the Rubicon Project launched in early 2007 to automate and optimize the buying and selling of online advertising. To achieve that goal, the company developed the industry’s largest and most widely recognized Ad Network Optimization solution, which has enabled premium Web publishers to make more money from unsold ad inventory. To date, the Rubicon Project has optimized more than 310 billion ads across 20,000 websites and raised $33 million in venture funding. In 2009 alone, more than $100 million in revenue will be managed by the Rubicon Project platform. Today the company’s core business is profitable and the organization is expanding by opening international offices, building new products and making strategic acquisitions.
“There are two new challenges facing the online ad industry; audience and data fragmentation. Advertisers need to connect directly with their audiences. Fragmentation has made it difficult for them to efficiently reach their audiences. Further, the recent growth in the number of data companies in the market has created fragmentation at the data level,” said Frank Addante, CEO and Founder. “Given our massive scale, we have taken a giant step toward solving the audience fragmentation problem. As a result, we have become a central place for ad networks, exchanges, publishers and audience rep firms to transact. Our platform has become a prime channel for many data companies to reach their customers and audiences. The acquisition of Others Online will help us solve the data fragmentation challenge to the benefit of everyone connected to the Rubicon Project platform.”
Jordan Mitchell, CEO and Founder of Others Online, who will become the Rubicon Project’s Vice President of Data Intelligence, added, “Currently the marketplace is fraught with inefficiency, lack of standardization, varying data quality and overlap issues. We built Others Online to specifically help publishers leverage data to make more money. We were looking to partner with a company that was going to use our technology on a massive global scale, and we found that indeed with the Rubicon Project. Together we will create tremendous opportunity for premium publishers by making sure every impression generates them the most revenue possible.”
Many of the industry’s premier data providers such as: eXelate, the first open marketplace for demographic, interest and purchase intent targeting data; and TARGUSinfo, creators of the AdAdvisor services bridging predictive offline data and online advertising, have already integrated with the Rubicon Project’s technology platform. Other data providers include data exchanges, behavioral, contextual, intent, search, geographical and demographic. Through the Rubicon Project platform, data providers are able to increase distribution of their data services to the massive audience of more than 500 million global unique users and the largest community of ad networks and publishers that transact with each other through the Rubicon Project’s infrastructure today. Others Online’s technology will serve as an enhanced data infrastructure foundation to unite disparate data points from multiple data providers to create a singular, data-rich view of audience for publishers, ad networks, exchanges and audience rep firms.
To read more about the importance of data optimization, check out the Q2 2009 Market Report.
About the Rubicon Project
Based in Los Angeles, the Rubicon Project launched in 2007 and set on a mission to automate the $65 billion global online advertising industry. Responding to one of the largest problems plaguing website publishers today – monetizing ad space that goes unsold (as much as 70 – 80 percent) across a fast-growing number of global ad networks – the Rubicon Project pioneered the category of Ad Network Optimization (ANO). Backed by $33 million in funding from Clearstone Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, and IDG Ventures, the Rubicon Project developed its patent-pending Smart Matching™ technology, which uses billions of pieces of proprietary market data to match each publisher ad impression to the best money-making opportunities from ad networks.
The company serves more than 1500 premium customers (publishers like Gannett, CareerBuilder, Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive and YellowPages.com) by optimizing more than 45 billion ads each month across hundreds of demand sources. Reaching more than 500 million unique Internet users, the Rubicon Project is one of the largest sources of ad inventory and reach on the Internet and the preferred source of targeted, audience-segmented inventory for ad networks and other resellers, many exclusive, around the world. The unique combination of demand optimization and SmartMatch™ technology drives revenue lift ranging from 30-300% for the Rubicon Project’s customers.
