Adify is a pretty cool advertising tool for publishers, giving you a hosted ad platform to manage your ads. I’ve been looking into it for clients and own projects, but never used it. This is how they pimp their service to publishers:
Publishers have full editorial control over the entire process. That means more revenue for your business with none of the usual compromises. You can set the prices. You can review every single ad placement. You can even support CPM, CPC, CPA and Sponsorship pricing with no additional technical implementation.
Not so different from the hosted solution from OpenX or Google in other words.
Well, now Cox Enterprises open their wallet and dish out $300 million for the ad network (press release), which is a lot of money. This isn’t the average “let’s buy something hot web 2.0-ish today people” deal though, with Adify reportedly making $7m last year, and is on track for $35m this year. Still, if you can’t this year’s prognosis in earnings as a basis for the deal (which is mad, I like madness), that means that Cos paid 8.57 years of revenue.
Of course, they didn’t calculate like that. Most likely they want to strengthen their presence in the online advertising sphere, being a player in cable networks.
More: TechCrunch, CNET, Techmeme
