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AOL Pings Quigo For Acquisition

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:23:46 +0000

Quigo and its AdSonar network became the latest in a string of advertising company acquisitions made by AOL in 2007.

One might think that AOL has plenty of contextual ad-matching capabilities with its Google partnership, but that hasn’t stopped them from picking up a smaller firm offering a similar service.

AOL announced it would purchase Quigo for an undisclosed sum. Quigo touts its AdSonar technology that lets advertisers purchase ads on websites based on specific pages, sections, topics or keywords.

The deal also brings AOL a search engine marketing business. Quigo owns FeedPoint, which offers PPC, paid inclusion, and comparison shopping services.

Quigo joins Tacoda, Adtech AG, and Third Screen Media, the latter a mobile advertising company, as 2007 purchase by AOL. Randy Falco, chairman and CEO of AOL, said in a statement that Quigo will help them “put the final pieces of Platform-A in place.” Platform-A represents the advertising services AOL will offer marketers seeking display ad options.

Adtech Interview – Tom – Quigo Technologies

Solomon Rothman — Wed, 09 May 2007 18:44:47 +0000

Quigo Technologies provides content-targeted ad services and search engine marketing solutions. Israel interviewed Tom (of Quigo) about the features and benefits of their adsonar and feedpoint services.

ESPN Punts Yahoo, Pings AdSonar Instead

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 21:16:12 +0000

The ESPN website will stop using Yahoo for its text ads, choosing instead to go with Quigo and its AdSonar product to deliver those advertisements instead.

Quigo picked up a high-profile win for its AdSonar auction-based pay-per-click advertising platform when it scored a deal with the World Wide Leader in Sports, ESPN. AdSonar is used by sites like the online home for Dilbert and other properties.

In announcing the deal today, Quigo chief revenue officer Henry Vogel said, “AdSonar will enable ESPN to capture the full value from its incredible brand equity and provide its advertisers with a new degree of transparency and success.”

The remark about transparency likely refers to how Yahoo and other big search advertising providers keep their proprietary algorithms and most other ad data a secret, even from their clients. ESPN’s motivation for the switch probably comes from a better share of the ad revenue than it received from Yahoo.

ESPN’s parent firm is The Walt Disney Company. The House of Mouse has a pretty healthy reputation at extracting the most money from its investments. An AdAge report on the deal noted some of the history Quigo and Disney share:

Quigo was founded in 2000 with the help of Highland Capital and Steamboat Ventures, the venture capital arm of the Walt Disney Co., which helps build relationships between Disney, ESPN and ABC and the companies in which it invests. The ESPN spokesman said Steamboat’s investment in Quigo did not influence its partnership with ESPN.com. “That was not the reason for the deal,” he said.

The explanation makes sense, mostly because Quigo puts the control of the auction, and thus the profits, in ESPN’s hands. Nearly 100 percent of revenue is better than 70 to 80 percent, depending on the previous deal Yahoo had with ESPN.

Now all we need to see is Deadspin bidding for the keyphrase “Chris Berman” in and ad auction and linking to this post on the Deadspin site.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.