Jumpstart Automotive Case Study: blueprint for a vertical ad network
written by Jay Parkhill, posted on October 16th, 2007
Jumpstart Automotive Media is a vertical advertising network focused on the automotive market. The company represents automotive web publishers for advertising sales and offers a suite of services for advertisers and publishers around that core business. Vertical advertising networks have received significant attention and investment recently, so Jumpstart’s story is timely. The company was founded in 2000 and acquired in May, 2007 for $110M in cash and earn-outs.
Interview conducted: Mitch Lowe, CEO & co-founder
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Linkshare Case Study: Not about the long tail
written by Nisan Gabbay, posted on September 4th, 2006
Why profiled on Startup-Review.com
LinkShare is a leading provider of affiliate marketing solutions which enable online merchants to offer commission for sales driven by other websites, called affiliates. LinkShare provides the technology for a merchant like Dell to partner with and track transactions originated by affiliates. The LinkShare network of merchants and affiliates make it easy for both parties to locate and partner with each other.
LinkShare was acquired in September 2005 for $425M in cash by the largest Japanese e-commerce company, Rakuten. The size of the transaction surprised many industry observers given the much smaller multiples paid for other affiliate marketing companies like Commission Junction, BeFree, and Performics. Hopefully this case study can shed some light on what Linkshare did right and the reasons for the premium paid by Rakuten.
Interviews Conducted: I interviewed two early employees of LinkShare who are no longer with the company and one early employee who is still currently at LinkShare. I also interviewed Jeff Molander, who was a co-founder at LinkShare competitor Performics. I also spoke to several LinkShare customers.
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Advertising.com Case Study
written by Nisan Gabbay, posted on August 7th, 2006
Why profiled on Startup-Review.com
Advertising.com was acquired by Time Warner AOL in June 2004 for $435 million, making it one of the most successful exits in the online advertising market. Prior to being acquired by AOL, Ad.com had filed to go public with 2003 revenue of $123M and $12M of operating income. Ad.com posted $46M of revenue in Q1 2004, making its yearly revenue run rate ~$250M. Founded in 1998, Ad.com’s revenue growth rate was impressive: 2001 $38M, 2002 $74M, 2003 $123M, 2004 >=$250M. Perhaps even more impressive was the competitive environment in which Ad.com achieved these results. There were the larger, established incumbents like DoubleClick, as well as a plethora of smaller ad networks which never came close to the scale that Ad.com achieved.
Key Contributor: Mike Woosley, ex-CFO Ad.com 1999-2004
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