AOL’s Platform-A Quietly Launches (or Re-launches) BidPlace SB
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February 18, 2009 – 4:41 pm
AOL Platform-A's BidPlace SB has launched, or relaunched, depending on what you know and when you started knowing it.
In our previous post on BidPlace SB, it appeared maintenance was underway or a change in strategy. Today, a commenter informs us that all is well and BidPlace SB (no one knows what SB means) is "live."
Positioning itself as a "self-service advertising solution," the new BidPlace SB instantly becomes the self-service tool providing the broadest reach of all the self-service options such as Google's AdSense Content Network, Yahoo Publisher Network / APT Platform, Adbrite, and Contextweb's Adsdaq - that is, if you go by the recent Comscore numbers for ad networks and exchanges.
It should be noted that once again an exchange is not calling itself an exchange which follows a recent trend.
Without having taken it for a test drive, we also wonder if BidPlace SB is truly an exchange and offering transparency into an advertisers targeted buy. Even it's not an exchange, the 90% reach of U.S. unique users by Advertising.com, which apparently provides the inventory of BidPlaceSB, is huge. We're curious about the targeting options. And, it would be great if Platform-A also offered an open API and frequency capping for self-service advertisers looking to make CPM buys.
In the weeks to come we'll try to find out - or perhaps one of you can fill us in.
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February 18, 2009 – 4:41 pm
3 Responses to “AOL’s Platform-A Quietly Launches (or Re-launches) BidPlace SB”
Hi, I'm the product manager for BidPlace SB. I'll try to answer some of your questions...
- The "SB" in BidPlace SB stands for "Small Business". BidPlace SB is a self-service tool for smaller advertisers who are looking to spend anywhere from $300 - $15K per month on display advertising.
- You guessed correctly - BidPlace SB is offering direct access to the 90% reach of the Platform-A / Advertising.com network.
- BidPlace SB lets users target by geo (at the state or DMA level) as well as by site content (26 categories to choose from). We'll also be offering demographic targeting in March.
- We've launched with CPM pricing, and soon we'll also offer CPC bidding.
By the way, Platform-A will also be releasing BidPlace Professional later this year. That product will be geared towards larger advertisers who want a combination of self-service and account support.
Let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks.
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Ad Traders Reply:
February 19th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Perfect. Thanks for the update.
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By Div Bhansali on Feb 19, 2009