Flycast Introduces E-commerce Initiative

Ad network Flycast Communications Corp. launched Flycast Valet, an e-commerce offering that creates new revenue channels and customer retention tools for the 1,200-plus sites in the network.

Flycast Valet also establishes new marketing opportunities for direct response and e-commerce advertisers, the company said.

Flycast selected Internet infrastructure company InfoSpace.com as a key provider in executing the initiative.

The company said Valet represents a concerted effort to empower small-to-mid sized Web sites to move beyond content publishing and participate in the expanding e-commerce arena.

The relationship with Infospace.com leverages its technologies and services to enable any site in the Flycast Network to develop customized affiliate e-commerce store-fronts that offer users the ability to purchase several million products and services available from more than 3,000 merchants and off-line catalogs.

Additional services include yellow pages, white pages, auctions, classifieds, the InfoSpace ActivePromotion merchandising tool and directory services.

Financial arrangements with InfoSpace were not disclosed.

“The custom e-commerce solution that InfoSpace.com has developed for Flycast and our broad-based content and distribution relationship promise to expand Flycast’s role as a Web advertising and e-commerce market maker, while empowering a vast number of content-oriented Web sites to embrace the burgeoning e-commerce industry.”

The Flycast Network reaches over 25 million consumers each month, or 41 percent of the U.S. Web audience, according to MediaMetrix figures.

Unlike its chief competitors in the ad network space, Flycast’s network is comprised of many non-branded sites that often lack the resources to independently develop and manage e-commerce initiatives.