Oded Itzhak, founder of Quigo is getting back into the advertising industry by launching a new startup called Doclix. Doclix is a pay-pay-click advertising network that claims will drive more traffic and ensure better advertising quality/placement. Doclix will deal wth mostly text ads, but will only deal with publishers that receive more than 1 million monthly unique visitors.
Itzhak has proven himself in the advertising space. Quigo raised $30 million in funding from Highland Capital Partners, Steamboat Ventures, and IVP. A couple of years later, he sold the company for $340 million to AOL. Doclix is working with a few of the same investors that put money into Quigo, including John Frankel.
Doclix’s text ads will have a box appear with more details similar to Kontera’s model. This tends to annoy visitors of the website. But Doclix ensures that if someone does see the ad, they intend to have wanted to see it in the first place. Kontera’s pop up ads simply appear if you put the mouse above the underline ad text. Doclix will be seeking additional funding in the near future.
In September 2006, the month that Pulse 2.0 was created, I pointed out that New York-based Quigo was beefing up their client list and that in terms of advertising, the company would be able to compete with Google AdWords. Quigo Technologies is known for their AdSonar product. AdSonar provides contextual advertisements based on keywords from any given website, similar to Google AdSense.
Currently, Quigo provides services to ABC News, Hollywood.com, ESPN.com, Forbes.com, FOXNews.com, CareerBuilder.com, and USAToday.com. In June 2007, Time Inc. decided to choose AdSonar to power the advertising for their websites as well. Time Inc. is a subsidiary of Time Warner Company. Time Warner Company owns America Online. Technically, its a situation where the client wants to become the owner.
America Online is currently putting together a deal to acquire the advertising company for $300 million. Kara Swisher of AllThingsD broke the news.
Adsonar, Quigo Technologies Inc.’s reply to Google Adsense and Yahoo! Content Match, has been beefing up their client list and recently was acclaimed a featured article by CNN asking, “Quigo: The next Google?” Adsonar grabs keywords from web pages and generates relevant ads for web publishers to implement on their website.
In July 2006, Cox Newspapers owners of key newspaper publications snagged Adsonar’s services for their child companies including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Austin American-Statesman. ESPN.com announced that they would be using Adsonar starting in the fall. Before Adsonar, ESPN.com was using Yahoo! Content Match. MarthaStewart.com, FOXNews.com, and USAToday.com are other high-profile websites that are monetizing from Adsonar. Also about one week ago, resume building and job database website, Careerbuilder.com also signed a deal with Quigo.
Several internet business experts are commenting that Quigo’s model of success is based on Quigo’s primary interest is to partner with companies and not to rival against them. For example, Google News can be seen as a rival to online newspaper publications whereas a Quigos News does not exist, therefore why should newspaper companies support Google by helping Google make money from Google Adsense.
Adsonar also offers a private Adsonar customer-supplier direct relationship so that ads of preference are provided on their websites. ESPN VP of Strategy and Business Development, Tim Dolman, statated that “Yahoo and Quigo both have good products but we liked the idea of having a little more control of our own destiny in having a private label service. Advertisers have the opportunity to buy ads on ESPN.com on its own merits.”
One of Quigo’s biggest investors is VC firm, Highland Capital which also funded Ask.com, Lycos, and Mapquest. Steamboat Ventures, an owner in Walt Disney and ESPN.com also has funded in Quigo as well. Quigo was co-founded by Yaron Galai, who “holds a patent (with 6 more pending) in the field of information retrieval from database-driven sources of information.”
