AdForce Partners with Akamai to Speed Ad Delivery

Ad delivery and management firm AdForce, which is majority-owned by CMGI, on Thursday teamed with Akamai Technologies, a company whose product speeds the delivery of data over the Web, in an effort to boost the efficiency of ad delivery.

As the Net grows more congested and marketers seek to experiment with rich media advertising, the problem of speedy and reliable delivery becomes a serious one, which AdForce is trying to address with this partnership.

“Together, we intend to remove the technological barriers to the deployment of Internet-based marketing programs,” says George Conrades, chairman and chief executive officer of Akamai.

Additionally, the AdForce deal is part of a cozy relationship between CMGI and Akamai. Last month the two companies launched a joint effort to Akamai-enable sites within the CMGI network, and pledged to work together on new technologies for the delivery of dynamic content and applications. So far, four CMGI-affiliated companies — AltaVista, NaviSite, NaviNet, and 1stUp.com are working with Akamai to improve the speed of their sites.

The technology to speed delivery is based on the idea of placing content and applications as close as possible to the end user. To that end, Akamai has built a network of 2,000 servers in 40 countries across 100 different telecommunications networks.