Founder of MiningCo -> About.com, which IPO'd. The allstar cast of investors is not surprising.
I like the idea of an inventory (like in the old text adventure games) for the internet, but I wonder if just having it be for a single object type is what users (versus what advertisers) want. Ideally you'd be able to keep anything in your inventory. This was part of the ultimate vision for Delicious a long time ago.
How do I know this? One summer I had the job of delivering ad mail. Most people are like me, didn't want it. But it was my job to deliver it, and I did. However there were some people who wanted it. You see they didn't know what they were doing with their weekend until they'd read the ads and learned where the sales were.
If they can connect with that audience, they could very well succeed. And sure, it may be a small portion of people. But it is a fraction that advertisers love to reach. You know, the people who like to cut out coupons. The ones who use groupon. The ones who are likely to actually buy if you offer them a deal.
From what I've read (very little), ad clickers make up some fairly negligible portion of total internet users, and tend to be less educated or have impulse problems like compulsive shoppers, gamblers, etc. Making a complicated system to 'save' and re-visit your 'favorite' ads later on seems to not target this ad clicker market at all, as they'll most likely never look at an old ad again. And I really, really don't see this turning more people into ad clickers.
This might induce job creation for paid ad clickers in india, though.
There's almost no user loyalty in the space, so creating an application people can go back to just so they can review the coupons they like is set up for failure on two accounts. This means the people behind the business ma not have done much market research. Or it may mean that they don't feel the need to cater to the customer, since they're not selling to them, but rather to the advertisers. So assuming that they had a solid business model and did the appropriate kind of research to make sure they would have clients and revenue, they probably have letters of intent and partnerships with a few advertisers who didn't crunch those kind of numbers, or trusted the perceived market expertise of this business.
That's what I mean by naivete.
Anyone need an idea for a side-project startup? This happens to me all the time and I absolutely hate it.
Incidentally, while looking at the code Reddit sends, I noticed this gem:
<script type="text/javascript">
$(function() {
var ad = $("#ad-frame");
if(ad.height() == 0 || ad.width() == 0) {
$(".footer").append(
"<img alt='' src='http://pixel.reddit.com/pixel/of_defenestration.png?hash=0e31bc319d5b5882b0cddf147f4ce1da5ac9c731&id=adblock&random=" + Math.random()*10000000000000000 + "'/>");
}
});
</script>
I had a good laugh at this. An ad service so good customers will be begging to try it!
That being said, I think one of the main hurdles a service like this will be user banner blindness. Many people have banner blindness and interactive advertisements don't seem to perform better than passive advertisements.
I'd think the value to publishers would be in acquiring additional metrics about user interest in a particular ad, but I'm sure the pricing will be a critical piece of the puzzle.
They certainly have a number of well-known advisors and large investors (not that that is enough to predict success!), it'll be interesting to see if it takes off.
Direct link to the site: http://www.adkeeper.com/
There has been plenty of times i've seen an ad for a discount at Threadless (etc), or a promotional offer i'm interested in, where I refuse to click due to my geekish nature considering it taboo to do so, but at the same time wanting to remember that deal for later when i'm free to go check it out. I'd still rather just jot it down in notepad though.
It's going to work great with deals and offers.
Pretty ads : ) Useful ads, entertaining ads. Ads people might want to share with their friends. It could be pretty cool.
Meanwhile, back on Main Street, and in Hacker's Haven, I bet most folks find them usually annoying or irrelevant noise, at best.