ESPN shows there's life after Google/Yahoo/MS

Yesterday Quigo (disclosure - my company) announced an exclusive deal to power all contextual ads on ESPN - the largest sports site in the world. This comes at the footsteps of the Google-MySpace deal, and the MSN-Facebook deal, and proves that there's life after Google (and Microsoft, Yahoo, etc).

When we first launched AdSonar, our contextual ad network, Google was already a gorilla in this space. At first we did the most natural thing for a startup to do in a space dominated by a gorilla - run after the crumbs (=small publishers) left by the gorilla eating all the good cookies. After all, what serious media company would partner with a little-known startup over the internet's sweetheart?

And then it dawned on us that we should completely flip the whole thing. The cookies are where you want to be.

Instead of being the one-size-fits-all that Google AdSense is, we worked for the next 1.5+ years on getting AdSonar to do for large media companies all the things that AdSense doesn't. AdSense operates under the Google brand? We give the publishers full control over the look&feel of the platform.  AdSense is a black box of advertisers the publisher can never get to? We give publishers full control and transparency over the advertiser relationships. Etc, etc.

Shooting for the cookies when you have a gorilla hoarding them, and paying $900M or more for some of them, is not a simple task (OK - that's the understatement of the century...). But our ESPN deal[1] shows that the fact that the gorillas are sitting in your market and paying billions of dollars to buy deals doesn't necessarily mean that the  whole market is done.

My personal conclusions:

1. The gorillas are trying to eat your lunch? - Don't panic.
2. Think hard about your market and find those areas that are not being optimally serviced by the gorillas. I guarantee there are.   
3. Carve your niche and obsess about servicing to its needs.
4. Kick everyone's asses in the niche that is now "yours".

Google AdSense and YPN are excellent options if you have a small/medium site that doesn't attract advertisers directly. But if you have a great brand like ESPN, and you have direct relationships with advertisers, there's really no point in handing all those assets over to the Google/Yahoo/MSN's of the world. AdSonar is a much better option for that niche of publishers, and it's nice to see that ESPN gets it.

More coverage on ClickZ, AdAge, Barron's Marketing Pilgrim, SearchViews and of course the Quigo Blog.

[1] ...as well as the Fodor's, Lonely Planet, Cox, IDG, and the many other great publishers who have chosen Quigo's AdSonar platform over the other options.

Comments

[Rogel]

congratualtions